CCPA Monitor Summer 2025

Progressivenews,viewsandideas

Local News

The care economy

OTTAWA OCCUPATION

Up Front

Unequal pandemic, unequal recovery

Katherine Scott / 15

Local news media is declining in Canada— we have to reverse the trend

Sonja Macdonald / 15

The pandemic wreaked havoc on hotel workers

Too many communities deprived of local news

Alice Mũrage and Michelle Travis / 21

Sheila Block earns prestigious award

RIP Canada’s carbon tax

Sheila Block / 12

Marc Lee / 6

Wanted: Leadership to create new public child-care spaces

Free contraception a win for all Katherine Scott / 13

PARLIAMENT HILL

Viewpoints

WELLINGTON RIDEAU CENTRE

From leader to laggard

Marc Edge / 19

Niall Harney / 25

A city that wants the CBC (but the feeling isn’t mutual)

Molly McCracken and Susan Prentice / 8

Canada’s failure to adequately address the Israel/Palestine crisis

Canada: A house divided

Clare Mian / 39

Katherine Scott /10

When “survival” jobs become “essential” work

Sonja Macdonald and Paul Shaker / 21

How to fix Canada’s housing crisis

Omatsu Files

Catherine Bryan and María José Yax Fraser / 27

CBC/Radio-Canada: a trusted Canadian symbol

Trish Hennessy / 23

Running on empty— the care economy / 28

What is CBC/Radio-Canada’s role in the future of Quebec media?

Alina Murad / 13

Kirsten Bernas and Shauna MacKinnon / 42

Bolder moves needed to tax the rich

Viewpoints

Marc Lee and DT Cochrane / 44

Canada’s murky North American future

source of progressive policy ideas. The CCPA began publishing the Monitor magazine in 1994 to share and promote its progressive research and ideas. The Monitor is published four times a year. The print version is mailed to all supporters who give $35 or more a year to the CCPA.

A timeline: The pandemic’s impact on women in the workforce

Stuart Trew / 42

Maxim Fortin / 26

Katherine Scott / 32

The truth about the CBC in Northern Canada

Artist uses photography and visualization to bond with her Indigenous ancestry

Emily Zarevich / 45

Mapping colonial harms: Social emergencies in Manitoba First Nations

You can gift the Monitor to a friend or family member, view previous issues, and read more free, timely content at www.policyalternatives.ca

UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA

Up Front

L.E. Fox / 30

Columns

Canadian cities could raise tens of millions of dollars with one tool: a local income tax

The Liberals have a mandate to improve CBC funding— here’s the case for it

Geoff Bickerton / 34

David Macdonald / 5 Tax cuts favour men

Jess Klassen / 6

Quality news matters in rural Canada

Faster internet as slowly as possible

Simon Enoch / 36

Randy Robinson / 7

SECURE AREA

The promise of social planning: Revisiting the CBC’s Citizens Forum

Anton Clark / 37

Why a capital gains tax on the rich makes sense

David Macdonald / 8

ESTABLISHED BY OTTAWA POLICE

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

Policy innovations

Trish Hennessy / 10

The case for a reimagined Radio Canada International Wojtek Gwiazda / 39

CCPA BC’s Ben Parfitt retires Ben Parfitt / 11

Centrespread / 28

HIGHWAY 417

Inside trade

Jonathan Meikle and Elizabeth Comack / 43

Stuart Trew / 38

Founded in 1980, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) is a registered charitable research institute and Canada’s leading source of progressive policy ideas, with offices in Ottawa, Vancouver, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto and Halifax. The CCPA founded the Monitor magazine in 1994 to share and promote its progressive research and ideas, as well as those of like-minded Canadian and international voices. The Monitor is is published four times a year by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and is mailed to all supporters who give more than $35 a year to the Centre. Write us at monitor@policyalternatives.ca with feedback or if you would like to receive the Monitor

The opinions expressed in the Monitor are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA.

ISSN 1198-497X

Books

A change is gonna come Peter Pronzos / 44

Books

Gutting our civil service for consultants undermines democracy

Simon Enoch / 50

Mark Carney’s Values: What his 2021 book reveals about the leader he might be

Canada Post Publication 40009942

The opinions expressed in the Monitor are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA.

Editor: Trish Hennessy

Associate Editor: Jon Milton

ISSN 1198-497X

Canada Post Publication 40009942

Senior Designer: Tim Scarth

Layout: Susan Purtell

Editor: Trish Hennessy

Associate Editor: Jon Milton

Marc Lee / 48

Corporatization of cannabis allowed profits to trump public health

Bruce Campbell / 51

1940s Quebec from the perspective of a sharp-minded young woman

Emily Zarevich / 51

Summertime and the reading is easy: What we're reading this summer / 53

A manual for Ontario

Ricardo Tranjan / 53

Science fiction author coins term for online digital decay + solutions

Amanda Emms / 55

A polarizing figure in his lifetime, Tommy Douglas is now canonized

Greg Marchildon / 54

From the Editor 1 / Letters 2 / New from the CCPA 3

Hennessy’s Index 37 / Get to know the CCPA 48 / CCPA Donor Profile 49

The good news page by Elaine Hughes 56

Letter from Erika Shaker 1 / From the Editor 2 / Letters 3 / CCPA in the spotlight 4

Senior Designer: Tim Scarth

Layout: Susan Purtell

Editorial Board: Catherine Bryan, Simon Enoch, Sabreena GhaffarSiddiqui, Jon Milton, Jason Moores, Erika Shaker, Trish Hennessy

How to contact the CCPA

200 COVENTRY

Letters to the editor monitor@policyalternatives.ca

Editorial Board: Catherine Bryan, Lisa Akinyi May, Simon Enoch, Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui, Jon Milton, Jason Moores, Trish Hennessy, Erika Shaker

CCPA National Office 141 Laurier Avenue W, Suite 1000 Ottawa, ON K1P 5J3 613-563-1341

ccpa@policyalternatives.ca

CCPA National 141 Laurier Avenue W., Suite 501 Ottawa ON K1P 5J3 613-563-1341 1-844-563-1341 ccpa@policyalternatives.ca

www.policyalternatives.ca

CCPA BC ccpabc@policyalternatives.ca

CCPA BC Office 604-801-5121

ccpabc@policyalternatives.ca

CCPA Manitoba Office 204-927-3200

CCPA Manitoba 204-927-3200 ccpamb@policyalternatives.ca

Hennessy’s Index 41 / Get to know the CCPA 46 / CCPA Donor Profile 47

Cover illustration by Sébastien Thibault

The good news page by Elaine Hughes 56

HIGHWAY 417

Based in Matane, Quebec, Sébastien Thibault creates illustrations that provide ironic or surrealist visions of political subjects or current news. He uses graphic shapes, simplified forms, and intense color to create symbolic images for publications like the New York Times, The Guardian, and the Economist

Cover illustration by Dave Murray

Dave Murray is a Toronto-based illustrator and coffee drinker. When he’s not in his studio, Dave can be found playing hockey, walking his dog, and cheering for the Montréal Canadiens.

Centrespread design by Joss Maclennan

Centrespread design and illustrations by Jamileh Salek and Joss Maclennan Joss Maclennan is the creative director of Joss Maclennan Design. She combines a passion for clear, simple language with a strong visual sense. Her background is mainly in design, but includes painting, drawing and illustration as well. Decades of experience help her find the central message and the way to convey it.

ccpamb@policyalternatives.ca

CCPA Nova Scotia Office 902-240-0926

CCPA Nova Scotia 902-943-1513 ccpans@policyalternatives.ca

ccpans@policyalternatives.ca

COVENTRY CAMP

CCPA Ontario Office

CCPA Ontario ccpaon@policyalternatives.ca

ccpaon@policyalternatives.ca

CCPA Saskatchewan ccpasask@sasktel.net

CCPA Saskatchewan Office 306-924-3372

ccpasask@sasktel.net

Jamileh Salek is an Iranian-Canadian artist, writer and illustrator. Pattern, colour and art making was part of her childhood and life in Tabriz and Tehran. This rich Persian heritage shows in all her work. Themes of migration, culture, and the shape of women's lives are woven into her painting, textile art and books.

Joss Maclennan is the creative director of Joss Maclennan Design. She combines a passion for clear, simple language with a strong visual sense. Her background is mainly in design, but includes painting, drawing and illustration as well. Decades of experience help her find the central message and the way convey it.

Located east of downtown in the Vanier neighbourhood, the Coventry camp was established by the end of the first week of the occupation. It quickly became a fortified encampment and home of the infamous saunas. It was not removed until February 20.

Erika Shaker

With so much at stake in Canada, we need to stick together

Judging from conversations I’ve had with so many Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) supporters, I’m not alone in worrying about what lies ahead as Canada braces for a Trump-induced economic downturn.

For some households, Trump’s tariff war will lead to a devastating financial crisis: mass layoffs, the potential implosion of Canada’s manufacturing sector, major destabilization in key regions.

Youth, who have already grown up with the 2008-09 global recession and the COVID-19 induced recession, are understandably questioning the system. Many are disillusioned. Some are losing hope. Others are falling prey to extreme right disinformation aimed at stoking anger and chaos.

We cannot let the forces of division win. This is an intergenerational project—and we need to come out unified. If ever Canada needed an audacious plan to weather this storm and emerge stronger, it’s now.

The next four years of federal government leadership will determine the next 40 years of Canada’s future. We must get this right.

That’s why we’re asking you to give generously to the CCPA’s National Research Fund.

Our National Research Fund helps us gather the experts, do the research, build a plan, and get it out into the policy world—to influence the government to make wise, evidence-based decisions.

It was our National Research Fund that enabled CCPA experts to weigh in at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown and influence the federal government to make key improvements to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB). Those improvements saved lives and kept people out of poverty during one of the biggest crises in Canadian history.

Especially in times of trouble, when Canada is under fire, we pull out all the stops to identify who needs support. To detail what policies would help. To promote solutions that deal with the root of the problem and create bold transformation to how we organize our economy. The National Research Fund ensures CCPA has the internal capacity to do this work and keep progressive priorities front and centre.

Change is either going to be done to us, or we can make the change ourselves—you and I, our friends and family, our neighbours and co-workers. But the stakes are too high for baby steps. We’re inspired to go big. And we won’t take no for an answer.

We take our leadership role—and your trust in us—seriously.

Help the CCPA continue to be a leading voice on the left.

You can count on the CCPA to push for transformative change that re-imagines our economy.

The federal government will be tasked with governing during a period of major upheaval. CCPA experts will continue to press for radical policy reforms.

Radical: “Of, or relating to, or proceeding from a root.” (Merriam-Webster). We need to rebuild Canada from the roots up. Our challenge will be threefold:

Help those in need.

It was our National Research Fund that enabled the CCPA to track the fate of women during and after the pandemic—to identify where women were recovering from the economic shock, and where they still haven’t recovered.

Our expertise spans the country and no other progressive think tank covers the wide range of policy issues as we do at the CCPA. The climate crisis is burning our planet. Income inequality is rightly diminishing people’s trust in the system. Our economy can no longer ride U.S. coat tails. And disinformation is polarizing us.

Ensure everyone has access to the essentials.

Shore up economic sovereignty— but make it inclusive this time.

Please consider donating to the National Research Fund right now. We rely on donations from people just like you to assert our independence—unlike the right-wing, corporate-backed think tanks.

Thanks, as ever, for your support. It truly means the world to us. M

Erika Shaker

is CCPA National Office director.

Trish Hennessy

Is the sun setting —or rising—on the CBC?

Iwas only a few years into my journalism career when the future began to visit the present. Newspapers were going through a hard time, and the layoffs were just starting.

Normally you’d think they’d start at the bottom, laying off rookies like me. Instead, they looked at the most senior journalists in my newsroom and unceremoniously sent them off to an early retirement.

I remember thinking: Who’s going to mentor the newbies?

About three years later, the writing was indisputably on the wall: print newsrooms were laying off journalists of all ages. I exited the field before they got to me, but I knew this was a harbinger of worse things to come.

Fast forward some 30 years later and my fears have come to life. The Moose Jaw Times Herald, my first daily newspaper as a journalist, has shuttered. Next stop, the Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal. It was once a training ground for some of Canada’s best known journalists; now a hollowed out newsroom. Then Kingston Whig-Standard, once considered one of Canada’s best newspapers; now a shell of its former self.

A shrinking news universe is bad news for our democracy.

In this issue of the Monitor, we look at Canada’s shrinking media environment and the role that Canada’s public broadcaster could play under a renewed mandate.

Heading into the spring federal election, the CBC’s fate was in the balance. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre promised to defund the CBC. Given the shrinking presence of privately owned media in Canada,

that didn’t make sense. Now that the Liberals have been re-elected, the CBC has a reprieve.

The sun isn’t setting on the CBC, but will it rise to its potential—and the moment—in the coming months and years?

High-profile CBC radio host Carol Off, now retired, has written: “As for the CBC, I’m part of a chorus of people, inside and out, who would like to see the public broadcaster go through a rethink.”

During the election, Prime Minister Mark Carney seemed to agree. On X/Twitter, Carney wrote: “CBC/Radio-Canada is a pillar of our Canadian identity. We’re going to strengthen our public broadcaster with more long-term funding, and a modernized mandate—to deliver more local news and keep Canadians informed during emergencies.”

In an October 2024 national survey, the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy asked Canadians what they think of the CBC. The biggest insight: most Canadians wanted to preserve it.

That finding echoes what the CCPA heard when we conducted

focus groups with Canadians about the CBC in February of this year.

In this Monitor, I write about those findings, and how the CBC is about as Canadian an icon you can get.

But that national survey also showed Canadians want the CBC to deal with public criticisms about the broadcaster. (There was, however, no consensus on what the main criticisms are—you may have your own.)

Conservative respondents in that survey were more likely to have harsh views of the CBC—”too woke”—but only 40 per cent of them wanted to reduce or eliminate funding.

That said, public broadcasting has been in the crosshairs of the extreme right for quite some time. U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in May seeking to cease federal funding for public broadcasters NPR and PBS.

Given how many Canadian Conservatives are willingly taking a page out of the Trump playbook, we can expect the CBC will continue to be one of their targets. But if we value local news, at the very least, cutting the CBC would be a disaster.

The solution isn’t to kill the messenger, it’s to pay for it, one way or another.

“You may argue that in your region you are not well-served by local media including the CBC, and I wouldn’t dispute it,” says Carol Off. “But the solution isn’t to kill the messenger, it’s to pay for it, one way or another.”

As we grapple with a surge of Canadian pride and renewed economic sovereignty, expanding legitimate news sources will be key. It’s an optimal time for CBC renewal. M

Letters

We love to hear from our Monitor readers! Send your letter to the editor (250 words or less) to monitor@ policyalternatives.ca

Spring 2025 Monitor

The whole of this issue is chock-a-block full of creative ways to reenergize our democracy. It should be required reading by all members of parliament and be part of all political science curriculum.

The concluding paragraph of Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood says: “Nobody wins a trade war. The preceding measures are ambitious and not without their costs.”

Some of the costs anticipated by present legislators that may be holding them back from making appropriate

decisions, is the threat of military aggression. Such a threat is a real possibility. The last thing Canada should do is to increase its military preparedness in anticipation of such a threat.

No matter how much we are willing to sacrifice in order to prepare for such a response, the result cannot be positive for Canada. The only meaningful defence is a total commitment to non-violence.

Such a commitment would entail detailed, profound, comprehensive training in the hundreds of non-violent techniques and mostly in creating a state of mind, a disposition of fierce non-violence. Strengthening all democratic institutions and opting to address conflicts with non-violence will allow us to live well through the tumultuous future ahead.

Thank you for putting together such a treasure.

Bruna Nota Toronto ON

I completely enjoyed the article by John Cartwright in the Spring 2025, issue of Monitor, “Leadership in a time of uncertainty”, focusing on the views of Marshal Ganz. Cartwright has identified Ganz as a true heir of Saul Alinsky.

At my tender age, I have become quite alarmed at deterioration of civic and civil communications in our society. These changes are happening in the online space with the anonymity available in social media.

Ideological and cultural change is cause for alarm,

and the parallel problem of a lack of leadership. I especially appreciated a definition of leadership Ganz once offered to Cartwright, “Leadership is the ability to allow others to act in common purpose in a time of uncertainty.”

And of course, there is the need for activist progressives in every community to identify and support new leaders. Ganz offered Cartwright a strategy to facilitate leadership and change: “do more listening.”

I’ll be checking my public library for a copy of Ganz’ book, People Power Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal.

Cliff Boldt Ferwood, Victoria

Winter 2025 Monitor

Your article “The Future of Food” was nostalgic for me. My maternal grandmother was partial to The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook—first published in 1930. The photo is of my grandmother’s most recent copy which is the 1971 4th edition. (As the story goes, an earlier edition was replaced with this one because the earlier one was food-stained and

falling apart from so much use. I still use this one occasionally. According to my Google search, The 18th edition of The Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook was published in 2022. My grandmother loved to tell the story of me, at 3-4 years old, helping her with jarring pickles. Occasionally, at a later meal, a pickle would be pulled from the jar with a bite out of it. Thanks for resurfacing the memory, Trish. And your article has contemporary relevance for me too. My son and his girlfriend are religiously vegan and are planning to produce a vegan cookbook. But ‘eat the rich’? Eww—who knows where they’ve been? But metaphorically, I’m totally on board. More literally, let’s tax them—till it hurts, a lot.

Mike DeVillaer Dundas, ON

Correction

Re: “We Saskatchewan public libraries.” A chart comparing Saskatchewan library attendance to other events incorrectly showed the same attendance for Saskatchewan Roughriders’ and Regina Pats’ games. In fact, fewer people attend the Pats’ games.

In the spotlight

The latest research from the CCPA

Beyond “Elbows Up”

Shortly after Canada’s 45th federal election this spring, CCPA experts got together to do a post-mortem. What just happened? What’s next?

As CCPA National Director Erika Shaker writes: “Disillusionment and disenfranchisement underpinned some of the shifts in voting patterns for this election, as the electorate decided which party should be held responsible for (and which one should benefit from) decades of bipartisan neoliberal policies that have gutted communities across the country and underfunded increasingly tattered social programs.”

Here at the CCPA, we believe steps need to be taken to address the sense of economic disenfranchisement of Canada’s young voters, reform electoral politics, and invest in our communities as well as the next generation of workers.

As Shaker writes: “put our priorities and our money where our elbows are.”

For CCPA Senior Economist Marc Lee, that means investing in a strategy around economic sovereignty and industrial policy—to really build Canada.

“The challenges facing Canada need public solutions, not tax cuts,” Lee writes.

Trump’s tariff war will hurt Canadian workers.

CCPA Senior Researcher

Stuart Trew says the federal government needs to act swiftly to protect jobs and Canada’s industrial capacity.

“Federal-provincial cooperation can redirect U.S. exports to domestic and other international buyers,” Trew writes. “Industry tables including worker and company representatives can provide a big picture look at current supply chain features to determine where vulnerabilities exist and how to close them.”

It’s an all hands on deck situation. It’s also a moment to break from the way things are always done, says CCPA Senior Researcher Katherine Scott.

“As we contemplate the different future in a new global order, it would be a mistake to cleave to narrow neoliberal policy prescriptions that have fuelled the rise in inequality and economic precarity around the world,” Scott says. “The private market won’t save Canada—or create a country where all can thrive. That’s on us.”

We also have to prepare for western alienation politics from conservative Prairie premiers, warns

CCPA Senior Researcher Simon Enoch.

“It is only a matter of time until they both reach into that deep well of western alienation again. The more concerning question is—like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice— can they continue to successfully stoke the fires of western separation without losing control over what they have helped create?”

Overall, we have to do some real soul searching, says CCPA Senior Communications Specialist Jon Milton.

“We saw, in droves, working-class voters (including union workers) shift to the right—an acceleration of a long-term trend of class dealignment among political parties,” Milton writes.

“Where working class voters used to reliably vote for their class interests—that is, for the left—they voted, in large numbers, for a right-wing, anti-worker party. We see the same trend now, shockingly, with age—where young voters used to overwhelmingly vote for the left, they have made a dramatic shift to the right. These are two of the core bases of left wing politics—and their rightward shift could spell doom for the electoral left in the years to come.”

That means getting to the root of the problem, say CCPA Manitoba Director Molly McCracken and Senior Researcher Niall Harney:

“The federal government needs to act decisively in the upcoming years to address the

underlying causes of inequality and the affordability crisis by making housing truly affordable and addressing poverty issues. Otherwise, this new federal government leaves itself vulnerable to disaffected voters who do not see themselves included in its economic and social policies.”

Time to re-embrace nation building

CCPA Senior Researcher Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood says it’s time Canada gets back into nation building.

“The Rideau Canal, Canadian Pacific Railway, Wartime Housing Limited and Trans-Canada Highway were nation-building infrastructure projects,” Mertins-Kirkwood writes. “Employment Insurance, the Canada Pension Plan and universal health care were nation-building social programs. And while we cannot ignore the colonialism and discrimination inherent to many of these projects, they are also important examples of government-led initiatives driven by concerns around sovereignty, resilience and the public interest.”

Among Mertins-Kirkwood’s suggestions:

• Build a publicly owned east-west electricity grid: “Clean power is perhaps Canada’s greatest strategic asset of the 21st century.”

• Deploy a massive, publicly led build out of affordable homes: “Something the federal government used to do until the 1990s.”

• Revitalize a clean manufacturing industry: “The economy is rapidly electrifying, but many of the materials and technologies that electrification requires are not being produced domestically.”

• Create a true public bank that can prioritize the public good: “A national public bank could accelerate community-led, sustainable and publicly owned projects across the country.”

We discovered insulin. Now we need a publicly owned producer

In 1921, Canadian researchers discovered insulin, the new miracle drug for people with diabetes. But as Health Researcher Colleen Fuller wrote for the CCPA’s online blog, Canada no longer produces the drug.

That wasn’t always the case. As Fuller writes: “in 1921, and for 65 years insulin was produced in Canada at a publicly owned laboratory—Connaught Laboratories—and distributed across the country at prices near the cost of production.”

Then politics happened.

“In 1972, the University of Toronto sold Connaught to the federal government. By the 1980s it had grown to become a major supplier of medicines and vaccines, and Canadians had one of the lowest overall drug bills among developed nations. That all changed when the Conservatives were elected in 1984,” writes Fuller.

“In his first budget speech, Michael Wilson, the new finance minister, announced that ‘Crown Corporations with a commercial value but no ongoing public policy purpose will be sold.’ That included Connaught, which was privatized a year later and bought by what is now Sanofi, based in Paris. Ten years later, Canada was no longer producing a single drop of insulin.”

Three manufacturers control almost all of the world’s insulin, creating barriers for people in low- and middle-income countries. Now we run the risk that they will abandon insulin in favour of more profitable weight loss drugs.

“Last year, for example, Novo Nordisk withdrew Levemir from the U.S. market, a unique type of insulin used by 300,000 Americans,” Fuller writes. “In April, it announced it would be discontinuing the sale of Mixtard cartridges, India’s top selling insulin product, and signalled that other withdrawals were just around the corner for the rest of the world. Eli Lilly, meanwhile, stopped supplying 3-ml vials of Humalog used by hospitals who save money (and waste) buying the insulin in smaller quantities.”

Canada needs a publicly owned insulin producer, Fuller concludes.

Implement national rent control

CCPA Senior Researcher

Ricardo Tranjan is a major thought leader on

affordable housing. In his Toronto Star oped, Tranjan makes the case for national rent control.

“In the late 1940s, provinces took on responsibility for rent controls, but amid the high inflation of the 1970s, Ottawa intervened once again, compelling provinces to regulate rents,” Tranjan writes. “It’s a myth that the federal government can’t act on rent controls. It can, and it has.”

Beware the tech bros

An increasingly vocal faction of Canada’s tech sector seems to think that what Canada really needs is a cost-cutting, budget-slashing, job-killing efficiency agency: A Canadian DOGE, writes Simon Enoch.

DOGE—the Department of Government Efficiency—is the agency led by Elon Musk that has taken a hatchet to multiple government agencies, in the search of “efficiencies.”

The incompetence of DOGE is already the stuff of legend: 300 nuclear regulatory workers fired, only to be re-hired once their essential role in nuclear security was recognized. However, re-hiring proved difficult, as DOGE had terminated the fired employees’ email and cell phone access.

Then there is the admission that DOGE shut down USAID’s Ebola prevention program, only to restore it days later—although critics still say the program is suspended.

And then there is the long list of supposed savings DOGE publicly promoted, only to be profoundly inaccurate upon later scrutiny.

Despite this track record, a select group of Canadian tech executives believe DOGE is something we should be replicating here in Canada.

Build Canada is a platform launched by 27 of Canada’s tech-bro heavyweights. It promises to share ideas from Canadian entrepreneurs for a “bolder, richer, freer country.”

While many of Build Canada’s policy proposals seem utterly self-serving, like deregulating delivery robots and digitizing Canadian’s health data, others are patent replicas of DOGE.

In particular, there is the call to eliminate 110,000 federal civil service jobs as well as the introduction of AI into public administration to further automate the federal civil service (and potentially supply the tech industry with a vast treasure trove of public data).

Build Canada has also created a sister website, called “Canada Spends”, that looks like a virtual photo-negative of the U.S. DOGE website, highlighting what it considers to be Build Canada supporters are particularly enamoured with the example of former Prime Minister Paul Martin’s infamous 1995 budget, in which he cut transfers and social spending so deeply that we are still living with the repercussions today. M

Up front

Marc Lee

RIP Canada’s carbon tax

Canada’s bold experiment with carbon pricing is over.

Politics crept up on carbon pricing in light of higher inflation rates in 2022 and 2023. With higher costs of living top of mind, it became convenient for politicians to point their fingers at the carbon tax (as opposed to the massive windfall profits going to the oil and gas industry).

Carbon pricing is based on the idea that carbon (aka greenhouse gas or GHG) emissions are an “externality”—a cost that is imposed on third parties to the market

transaction. By taxing emissions, market prices would reflect those costs and markets would work more efficiently. Carbon pricing was thus the finest hour for neoclassical economists, with the vast majority in academia in support. At its peak, several new think tanks were born specifically to promote carbon pricing, a development unlike any other area of public policy.

The federal decision to end consumer carbon pricing has echoes of the October 2024 British Columbia election, in which Premier David Eby promised to end B.C.’s

consumer carbon tax amidst a surge in polling numbers for the B.C. Conservative party. That was then an idle promise due to the federal carbon price floor, but now that has been removed by the prime minister, B.C. has officially turned from carbon tax cheerleader to opponent.

Federal carbon pricing was notably shaped by B.C., which first implemented a broad-based carbon tax in 2008 as part of a Climate Action Plan that included putting GHG emission targets in legislation and new programs to reduce emissions in homes and businesses.

B.C. environmental groups made a carbon tax a litmus test of the government’s credibility on the climate file. Later, awards from environmental non-government

organizations (ENGOs) would be lavished on then B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and the governing B.C. Liberals for their climate plan and early steps on carbon pricing.

The speed at which the B.C. carbon tax was implemented was impressive. Announced in the February 2008 budget, the carbon tax went into effect in July that year. Starting small, at $10 per tonne of CO2 (a mere 2.3 cents per litre at the pump), the tax increased annually and by mid-2012 hit $30 per tonne (7.2 cents per litre), after which the B.C. government put a lid on further increases.

The B.C. carbon tax was designed to be a revenue-neutral tax shift, balanced by reductions in personal and corporate income tax rates, plus a Climate Action Tax Credit (CATC) aimed at low-income households. This design insulated the carbon tax from claims it was a tax grab, while protecting low-income households from the full force of a regressive tax.

Nonetheless, from the outset, the B.C. carbon tax was controversial and made for wedge politics. Inspired by B.C., then-federal-Liberal Leader Stephan Dion failed to get traction on a proposed revenue-neutral carbon tax, losing in 2008 to the Conservatives, whose leader Stephen Harper proclaimed the plan to be a “tax on everything” that would “screw everybody.” Back in B.C., the NDP launched an Axe the Tax campaign in the 2009 provincial election, but the governing Liberals won.

In the aftermath of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, discussions towards a pan-Canadian plan for reducing emissions put carbon pricing front and centre. The federal government chose a carbon pricing backstop to provide provinces with flexibility to implement their own systems while ensuring a minimum carbon price across the country.

Starting in 2019 at $20 per tonne, the federal carbon pricing backstop

grew to $80 per tonne (about 18 cents per litre at the pump), as of April 2024. It was due to rise to $95 on April 1, 2025 and had a destination of $130 per tonne by 2030. The federal carbon pricing regime also followed revenue neutrality. In provinces where the federal carbon pricing backstop applied, all revenues collected in that province were returned to households through a quarterly income transfer known as the Canada Carbon Rebate.

The federal carbon pricing backstop survived a major legal challenge from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, which disputed the federal government’s constitutional authority to regulate greenhouse gases. In March 2021, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld federal authority to regulate emissions through tools like the carbon pricing backstop.

The federal decision to end consumer carbon pricing is the end of an era but it is not the end of climate policy. Carbon pricing was always just one tool in the toolkit and needed to be complemented by regulations, subsidies and public investments. Even with the carbon tax in place, Canada was not on a trajectory to meet its 2030 emissions target, largely due to allowing continued growth of oil and gas production for export.

The federal government also intends to kill the Canada Carbon Rebate, which was designed so that most households would get more back, on average, in the rebate than they paid in carbon tax. Losing both the tax and the rebate will increase inequality and make life less affordable for low- to medium-income households. Keeping the carbon rebate would help advance an affordability agenda.

As stated in his leadership campaign, Carney promised improvements to industrial carbon pricing (the output-based pricing system, OBPS) but political considerations will weigh heavily on any plans for a more stringent system.

The OBPS has already been gutted by design, exempting large portions of industrial emissions in the name of “competitiveness” while allowing generous provisions for carbon credits and offsets.

We’re left in Canada without a clear road map to meet our stated emission reduction targets and commitments under the Paris Agreement. The prime minister also speaks of border carbon adjustments to put tariffs on imported goods reflecting carbon intensity, but this makes little sense, having done away with the consumer carbon tax.

Politics may have killed carbon pricing, at least for now, and populist stirrings on this front seem a soft form of climate change denial. Faced with urgent and existential threats from south of the border, the federal government appears to be putting climate action on the backburner.

That would be a mistake. Over the broad sweep of time, policy trends come and go, and Donald Trump won’t be in power forever (we hope). For Canada, it’s imperative that we continue to push towards building a truly sustainable economy and making bold public investments that put Canada on the right track. Our 2023 Spending What it Takes report cites key areas for major federal investments across Canada to put us on a pathway to decarbonization.

Pivoting to stronger public investment and green industrial policy, while tightening up regulations on big polluters, should be top of mind towards our commitments to the Paris agreement. As Hadrian MertinsKirkwood shows, east-west green infrastructure for high-speed rail and electricity connections/grids can weave the country together. Climate action now strengthens our economy and will make us more competitive in the long run. 

Marc Lee is a CCPA senior economist, based in Vancouver.

Molly McCracken and Susan Prentice

Wanted: Leadership to create new public child care spaces

Most Manitoba children live in a child care desert

In Manitoba, the parents of more than 39,000 children now pay just $10 a day for child care, thanks to new federal investments. This is a wise and cost-effective program for children and families—but there are still too many families who can’t find a licensed space.

At present, just 20.1 per cent of Manitoba children aged 0-12 have access to a licensed child care program. It is time to develop innovative ways to expand child care access in Manitoba, and a stronger public role is the best place to start.

Expanding public child care will generate economic opportunities and build economic resilience. Between now and 2031, Ottawa will transfer over $2 billion to Manitoba to support child care. The province

of Manitoba should ensure it has maximum impact.

The new, more affordable child care plan has stimulated economic activity. Economists confirm that women’s labour force participation has grown across the country, particularly in full-time jobs, as more affordable child care helps more mothers work.

The gains in women’s labour force participation have been most striking in Manitoba, which saw the greatest jump in the number of mothers newly entering the labour force. Manitoba has seen an eight per cent increase in the rate of mothers’ labour force participation, nearly twice that of Ontario, since 2019.

Moreover, the early learning and child care sector itself is an

employment creator, generating more than 40,000 new jobs across Canada in recent years. In fact, the sector ranks as the sixth-largest job-creating sector in Canada’s entire economy over the past five years, with a far larger employment boost than traditionally assumed drivers like natural resources or manufacturing.

Additional new jobs have been created in child care facility construction, renovations and supply chain purchases. A recent study by the Centre for Future Work calculates that $32 billion in additional GDP was created in 2024 from the combination of more child care services, increased indirect (upstream and downstream) spin-off jobs, and increased female labour supply compared to 2019.

Child care is an effective lever of economic development

The smart “build, build, build” focus of the 2025 Manitoba budget can fuel child care expansion with its positive economic returns. Manitoba has committed to creating 23,000 new spaces across the province,

and stepping up the pace of growth will provide needed economic and social development.

The first to begin will be a public affirmation of child care’s essential role in early childhood development, the well-being of families, gender equity, Indigenous reconciliation, sustainable development and social infrastructure. The federal government has such a declaration in Bill 35, the Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act, which takes a rights-based approach. To date, Manitoba’s early learning legislation is silent on its vision and these shared policy goals.

To realize the vision, Manitoba needs to develop new mechanisms to plan, fund and deliver early learning and child care services where they are needed.

Today, most Manitoba children live in a child care desert. Where services can be found, the relatively small stock of child care services is nearly all owned and operated by non-profit, and often charitable, parent-led organizations.

Over 94 per cent of Manitoba’s centres are non-profit independent businesses. This model has many strengths. Yet it requires volunteers to develop essential services, including fundraising to build new facilities.

It is long overdue to bring public bodies into the sector as delivery agents. This starts with provincial leadership to create much-needed new spaces, just as is done with hospitals and schools. This is historically how we have ensured equitable access to needed services.

We can follow the example of other jurisdictions. In Quebec, for example, school boards offer care to children aged six to 12. In Ontario, for over 80 years, cities and towns have owned and operated child care centres, meaning early childhood educators are municipal employees.

There are promising signs that some public bodies in Manitoba are already stepping up. The Manitoba Métis Federation has an ambitious

project to start up Métis early learning and child care programs, and more than half a dozen centres have already opened. There are First Nations centres in Lake St. Martin, Peguis, and Sioux Valley, among others.

But there’s not a single space owned and operated by Winnipeg, Brandon, Thompson or any other town or city across the province.

The Division scolaire franco-manitobaine (DSFM) has partnered with a provincewide organization to operate French-language child care centres.

In contrast, there is scant leadership from English-language school boards to ensure older children have child care before and after school, or that younger children can experience a full day.

While over half of Manitoba’s child care centres are located in an

English public school or on school property, they are there as rent-paying tenants and not as education partners.

It’s time for the province to lead with other public entities—school divisions, health authorities, First Nations, Métis and Inuit governments and other public bodies—to collaborate and accelerate the creation of child care in our province. A greater public role for child care will accelerate economic and social gains for Manitoba at this time of economic uncertainty. 

Previously published in the Winnipeg Free Press. Molly McCracken is the chair of the Child Care Coalition of Manitoba (CCCM) and director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives—Manitoba (CCPA MB). Susan Prentice is the Duff Roblin professor of government at the University of Manitoba, a member of CCCM and a CCPA MB research associate.

Katherine Scott

Canada: A house divided

We can’t be complacent about gender equality

The Liberal Party’s election win caps a remarkable reversal in its fortunes over a few short months, with Canadians placing their bet on leader Mark Carney to confront and contain American threats to our economic and political sovereignty.

There will be much to parse over the next months for progressive movements. The historic vote saw the emergence of a two-horse race between the Liberals and Conservatives and the collapse of NDP and Bloc Quebecois support.

The trade war with the U.S. consumed much—if not all—of our

collective political attention during the election campaign. Women’s voices and issues of gender equality failed to achieve any kind of traction and were largely sidelined in the public debate, as were other progressive voices.

The decline in the number of female candidates running was one of the most visible signs of the change in the political landscape. Women made up just 36 per cent of the Liberal roster, down from 43 per cent in 2021, and even less (23 per cent) among Conservatives. Women will make up a smaller share of MPs than in the last

parliament—29.7 per cent vs 30.5 per cent—the first decline since 2004.

This places Canada even further down the league table for representation of women in parliaments worldwide—in 73rd place, behind eight of 10 provincial legislatures. More than half (52.7 per cent) of the legislators in British Columbia are women, just to drive this point home.

The lack of focus on key issues affecting gender equality and impacting women—such as child care, precarious housing, fair wages, and gender-based violence—did not reflect a lack of concern among voters. The very high cost of living, astronomical rents, the state of Canada’s care economy all figured at the top of public opinion polls throughout the election.

Rather, the anti-feminist backlash changed the political calculus in

an election that zeroed in almost immediately on the two main parties.

For the Liberals, there was nothing to be gained in focusing on gender equality in their push to make a decisive break from the Trudeau years. The Conservative Party, for its part, ran on a platform to excise feminism and “woke ideology” from government. The substantive needs, concerns and aspirations of women and marginalized communities didn’t factor into the electoral equation at all.

From “sunny ways” to “boots, not suits”

Back in 2015, Justin Trudeau’s feminist politics were integral to his promise to bring “sunny ways” to the task of governing, a return to “positive politics” after 10 years of Conservative government. In the 2025 campaign, the same Liberal party under a new leader made an explicit choice to jettison the feminist cause so closely associated with the former prime minister.

The Trudeau government recorded many important achievements over its tenure, including the introduction of a national child care program, proactive pay equity, gender budgeting legislation and free birth control.

At the same time, the government’s equity agenda came under sustained attack from the Conservatives and other far-right groups, who characterized these same accomplishments as “woke”—a term used to malign a broad range of issues from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to the price on carbon and reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, all targeted as exemplars of government overreach and the excesses of identity politics.

The new Liberal team was determined to signal change and to sideline—rather than confront—these damaging culture war narratives. The economic war launched by the U.S. provided the

opportunity. The campaign was able to establish a singular frame around Trump and threat to Canada’s sovereignty, and to position calm, experienced Mr. Carney as the best response.

The Liberal platform reiterated the party’s support for women’s rights and pledged to “strengthen” child care, invest in gendered health disparities, work to end gender-based violence, and make permanent the Sexual and Reproductive Health Fund and the 2SLGBTQI+ Community Capacity Fund. No further details were provided.

We had an early sign of how the Liberal campaign would unfold

in March when the newly elected Liberal leader removed the Minister for Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) from Cabinet. In announcing this new “leaner, focused cabinet”, the Prime Minister’s Office stated it’s focusing on “the things that matter most to Canadians, such as strengthening Canada’s economy and security.”

As if issues of social justice are separate from the economy and geopolitics. As if combatting the systemic barriers that women face isn’t essential to navigating the current economic crisis and creating a more resilient and prosperous future for all.

Women’s representation in federal and provincial legislatures Most recent election

Thus, we had the Liberal Party’s studied neglect of gender equality on the one hand, and the Conservative Party’s hyperbolic campaign against “woke ideology” on the other.

Feminism does feature in the Conservative election strategy—as a straw man for its narrative that governments have gone too far, constraining free speech, imposing unjust taxes, destabilizing “the traditional family,” and letting crime spiral out of control.

It’s a plank straight out of the culture war playbook, designed to tap into social and economic grievances, especially among men.

Since taking leadership of the party in 2022, Pierre Poilievre has trained his sights on so-called “woke” policies. He’s called on Canadians to “put aside race, this obsession with race that wokeism has inserted.” He’s spoken of replacing the military’s “woke culture” with a “warrior culture” and repealing the Liberals’ “woke criminal justice agenda” and “woke agenda on spending.”

The 2025 election platform promised an “end to the imposition of the woke ideology in the federal public service and in the allocation of federal funds for university research,” by eliminating DEI initiatives and wasteful government spending.

What does this promise actually mean? Eliminating pay equity and retracting the Employment Equity Act, firing employees in Crown Indigenous Relations, disbanding research into health disparities, cancelling employment programs for people with disabilities?

The Conservative Party is pretty vague on the details. To get an idea, we have only to look at what’s happening in the United States, as Elon Musk and his team at DOGE wielded their chainsaws. Republican governments’ attacks on reproductive health services are already having a devastating impact on the lives of women.

But then again, women were not the Conservative Party’s target

The right has weaponized women’s rights and gender equality

market. Their crusade against “woke ideology” and “woke culture” is designed to consolidate their base of social conservatives and to expand their appeal to young men and blue-collar workers. The party’s “More Boots, Less Suits” plan was all about a single group of working-class men in male-dominated trades, and not the many more working-class women in low-paying services.

Women got the message. Going into the final vote, over half of women signalled that they would be voting Liberal, compared to just 30 per cent for the Conservatives, widening the already significant gender divide in Canadian electoral politics.

It’s time for a feminist reset

Last year, the ballot box question was about “continuity versus change”. The question wasn’t if the Liberals were going to lose, but by what margin. In a few short weeks, Donald Trump disrupted the political landscape and rewrote the script. As David Coletto from Abacus Data wrote: “The ballot box psychology flipped from scarcity-driven anger to precarity-tinged caution”. “Continuity versus change” became “stability versus disruption”.

The Conservatives’ 25-point lead evaporated. Older voters and a majority of women chose the candidate they considered best able to navigate the uncertainty ahead, skeptical of the MAGA-adjacent Conservatives and their leader.

Many younger voters, on the other hand, figured that they had nothing to lose and threw their support behind the Conservatives in pursuit of a different future.

The challenge now for the Carney government is to deal with Trump’s disruptive presidency while building out a more prosperous and inclusive economy at a time of profound precarity and division. This country is increasingly a house divided: not just by regional differences, but by age and gender and culture.

As we contemplate the different future in a new global order, it would be a mistake to cleave to narrow neoliberal policy prescriptions that have fuelled the rise in inequality and economic precarity around the world. The private market won’t save Canada—or create a country where all can thrive.

It would also be a mistake to proceed as if fundamental issues of gender equality are divorced from the health of the economy. We will see how the prime minister proceeds with the selection of his new cabinet—will he stay the course or bring the WAGE minister back to the table? Will he deliver for those who turned his electoral fortunes around?

This election has shown us that we can’t be complacent about progress on gender equality. The right has weaponized women’s rights and gender equality, and their attack on “woke ideology” is a Trojan horse for regressive policies of all kinds. Our response cannot be silence.

It’s time for a reset. It’s time to re-centre the pursuit of gender equality in the effort to confront American threats and chart an alternative course. It’s a moment to stand together to protect our collective future. 

Katherine Scott is a CCPA senior researcher, based in Ottawa.

Alina Murad

How Canada could modernize asylum claims system

In recent years, the Canadian government has made it more difficult for refugee claimants to apply for asylum. The federal government has reinstated visa requirements for Mexican nationals and closed irregular entry points like Roxham Road through the secret renegotiations of the Safe Third Country Agreement, under the assumption that increasing procedural and physical barriers would stop individuals who are escaping persecution from making an asylum claim.

Despite extensive public consultations led by community groups, where many warned that the strategy would ultimately fail, the government proceeded with a policy approach that underestimated the realities of forced migration.

When displacement is driven by urgent threats to personal safety or fundamental human rights, policy restrictions alone are rarely a deterrent. Migration rooted in necessity does not respond to bureaucratic barriers—it responds to survival.

What is overlooked in public debate is that most claims are not only genuine, but legally sound. According to data from Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, around 83 per cent of refugee claimants who make it to a hearing before a judge are accepted. In other words, once someone can explain why they fled their home, they’re overwhelmingly found to have a legitimate reason, usually a real and serious fear of persecution. That number alone should

reframe how we talk about this issue.

And yet, even for those who’ve cleared initial screenings, the road ahead remains full of delays. The biggest two are the wait for a work permit and a hearing with the Immigration Refugee Board of Canada, the judicial body that decides on their refugee claim.

Technically, the timeline is 30 days for a work permit. In practice, many claimants wait four, six, and sometimes even 10 months to receive a work permit, which then allows them to earn a living for between two and three years before their hearing with a judge on their asylum claim. That’s not a minor inconvenience. It leaves people stuck, unable to work, secure stable housing, or take care of their

Asylum seekers lining up to enter Canada from end of Roxham Road, Champlain, NY / WikiImages

families, while also being blamed for relying on public services—even though the government excludes them from most public services due to their temporary status.

The challenges refugee claimants face are not abstract. A large percentage of work permits sit in bureaucratic purgatory—lost in the mail, sent to old addresses, or delayed indefinitely with little explanation. The toll this takes on migrants’ mental health is significant. Many are forced into shelters or rely on food banks while living in legal limbo, due to the high waiting times to get a court date. What’s more troubling is that the government continues to direct funding toward enforcement and surveillance rather than improving administrative processing.

The actual strain on our social systems doesn’t come from claimants themselves, but rather from policies that leave them unable to contribute. The lack of work permits early in the process prevents people from supporting themselves, despite having cleared security screenings.

And yet, politicians and media often portray them as a burden, unfairly blaming them for a situation they have no control over. Canada’s current immigration system is purposely stacking the odds against refugee claimants, punishing them for daring to seek the same safety many of us have been born into.

While some officials argue that the system is simply overwhelmed, the truth is more nuanced. The current framework was built decades ago for a different context and has not been meaningfully adapted to reflect today’s global realities. The solution isn’t to make it harder to seek asylum—it’s to modernize how we respond to it.

Increased refugee claims are not a uniquely Canadian phenomenon. Sweden, for instance, has adopted a more pragmatic and humane model in reaction to increasing refugee claim numbers. The Swedish government issues refugee claimants

temporary ID cards shortly after they pass initial security checks. These cards are not just symbolic—they include QR codes that give access to all essential documents, including work permits. This system acknowledges that while the determination process may take time, individuals should not be left idle or in distress during that wait.

The Swedish model demonstrates that early access to identification and work authorization allows people to integrate more smoothly into their new communities. It reduces dependency, enhances mental well-being, and creates pathways toward financial independence.

Here in Canada, despite policy-makers making repetitive claims of modernization, our immigration processes are still tangled in paper-based bureaucracy, outdated workflows, and disenfranchising members of society.

Creating a secure, temporary digital ID for asylum seekers, replacing the current Refugee Protection Identification Document (RPID), would consolidate key documents, such as work permits, refugee claim status, and other relevant records, and offer a practical and dignified solution to some of the current bottlenecks.

The federal government could issue this ID immediately after claimants pass their security screening, giving them the ability to move forward. It would reduce the administrative burden on community organizations, legal clinics and government staff, who currently spend enormous time troubleshooting systemic delays.

Digitizing this process would alter our refugee documentation infrastructure for the better. It wouldn’t just empower claimants, it would benefit the entire community. With the ability to work, people could secure housing, support their family, and contribute to the economy. This shift could ease pressure on shelters

and food banks while supporting smoother long-term integration— introducing streamlined efficiency for the sake of dignity.

Anti-immigrant forces in political parties and the media have deeply embedded a narrative that frames refugee claimants as dependent, unproductive, or even deceptive. They point to stereotypes when systems deny claimants the chance to work or live with stability, and claim that migrants do not want to work or be productive.

But when the immigration system blocks people from participating in society, it sets them up to fail.

Giving refugee claimants proper, functional ID with embedded documentation affirms their legitimacy, builds trust, and sets the tone for a healthier integration process. It also reinforces Canada’s international obligations to treat people seeking safety with dignity and fairness.

The notion that our current refugee backlog is the result of increased demand distracts from the inability of our government to maintain service standards and deflects blame and responsibility onto people risking everything to reach safety.

As one of the world’s most resourced nations, Canada can and should do better for the people trying to participate in its society. By moving toward practical, people-centred reforms, we can create a more just and functional system, one that lives up to the values we claim to uphold. M

Alina Murad works as the advocacy and media relations coordinator at The Refugee Centre, based in Montreal.

This article is part of The Omatsu Files, a running column written in memory of Rick Omatsu, who was born in 1939 in Vancouver, on the cusp of WWII, which would change his life—a life that was sadly marked by racism. As a Japanese Canadian, in 1942, Rick was sent to the B.C. interior. After the war, the family was forced by the government to leave the province. The Omatsu Files is a space dedicated to the voices of young researchers from equity-deserving backgrounds who are focusing on issues of equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism.

The state of local news media in Canada is in sharp decline, which has serious implications for local communities and for the larger national dialogue about the democratic future of our country. It also exposes a need to rebalance our local media system across the country, including understanding what role public-service media (like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, community and non-profit media) could take to tackle local news deprivation.

Statistical analysis of closures and consolidations of local news outlets over the last 16 years shows a stark picture of the failings of privately owned media to deliver local news and information. But it is also important to understand the federal regulatory system that has bolstered that failing system, and only shifted, too late, to try and salvage local news and information.

Despite the dire circumstances, there is an opportunity to re-balance the local media system, in part by giving power back to local communities as well as increasing the role of public and community broadcasting and news production.

The Canadian news media environment is made up of a number of different elements. Traditionally, Canadians have received their local and national news either through print or broadcasting services and, more recently, via online services. Local print media was delivered through community, local, or national newspapers, privately owned commercial ventures financed through local advertising.

In the broadcasting environment, there were local privately owned television and radio stations, also made viable by an advertising model. In radio, privately owned stations dedicated to local news and public affairs programming were also common, alongside other music format stations that had local news requirements.

Also in broadcasting, Canadians are served by public service broadcasters, such as CBC/Radio-Canada and community public access television, as well as community and campus radio.

This model of news media delivery was stable for most of the 20th century. Yet by the 1990s, two factors—media consolidation and a digital shift— emerged and have now collided, leading us to today’s failing local media environment.

Media concentration

Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Canadian media companies began a decades-long transformation through ongoing consolidation of media assets and companies.

The idea was that by owning various commercial media properties, owners could benefit from more advertising revenue and a consolidation of programming production costs (including news content) that could be delivered across various media properties.

Consolidation took various forms. Initially, it was horizontal, owning similar media properties, e.g. newspapers in different communities. Followed by integration of properties across media forms, e.g. newspapers, television and radio.

With increased digitization of media, consolidation shifted to ownership of media infrastructure (cable and telecommunication networks that provide cable and telecom (mobile) services), and the production of media content (television, radio, print and online content, including news content).

More recently, concentration in media ownership is ownership by financial sector owners (e.g. hedge funds, asset management companies etc.), whether in Canada or abroad. This shifts the purpose from news and content development to solely revenue generating properties. It also removes whatever revenues that are generated from these media properties from being reinvested in the Canadian media sector or even staying in Canada.

Concentration of local media meant ownership and management moved further from the local community, often resulting in significant and successive reductions in local news programming, production and staff. It also meant that editorial responsibility for local content moved further from the communities being served, with little recourse for residents and officials to advocate for better coverage for their community.

The federal regulatory body, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC), was, in part, responsible for the increased consolidation. It regulates broadcasting station licences and can approve or reject changes in ownership of broadcasting properties. The CRTC can stipulate conditions of licences in terms of programming or specify benefits, usually financial, that would come from the different rounds of consolidation.

These financial benefits (called “tangible benefits”) would be fed back through the CRTC via various funds supporting Canadian content production or local news programming.

As the patterns of consolidation became more entrenched in the Canadian media system, regulators became reliant on tangible benefits to fund other parts of the system.

By the early 2000s, the CRTC began to address the negative implications of consolidated media ownership. First, the commission began requiring more specific local news “conditions of licence” for media groups. In 2008, it announced its “Diversity of Voices” policy, in an attempt to restrict the number of media properties owned by one group in a single community. By 2016, the CRTC’s television policy outlined specific local programming requirements for all commercial television stations.

Digital shift

The second factor is the digital shift in the delivery of media content that has grown exponentially since the mid-2000s. The digital shift in print news saw newspapers move online, often behind a paywall. In broadcasting, online services, such as YouTube, Netflix and social media like Facebook, X (Twitter) and Instagram, have disrupted the traditional private-sector media model in Canada and beyond.

The main way it has done this is to provide easier access to news content and other programming, while undercutting the traditional advertising model of private media.

The signs of the digital disruptions were clear to see as far back as the 1990s. The federal government, through the CRTC, had two opportunities—first in 1999 and again in 2009—to set up a regulatory process to support the digital shift of news and Canadian content to the digital environment. In both cases, it decided to exempt online broadcasting content from regulation.

By the late 2010s and early 2020s, the collision of large, consolidated media companies that dominate the local news environment, which is heavily reliant on advertising revenue with the digital shift of Canadians seeking content online, came to fruition. It was only at this crisis point that the federal government began to intervene to bolster the commercial media model in a digital shift. This included through financial incentives, as well as changes to the Broadcasting Act, to attempt to reclaim and generate new income to support media companies.

Financial and regulatory incentives

The federal government has long provided financial incentives to print and broadcasters to support the Canadian news and creative sectors. In the early decades of the 21st century, the federal government also introduced other financial incentives to support Canadian and, specifically, local news and information at both the subscriber level and the news production level.

Some examples of this include the Digital News Tax Credit, the Local Journalism Initiative, the Local Program Improvement Fund (LPIF), and the Independent Local News Fund.

In 2023, the federal government passed two Acts that updated the legislative approach to broadcasting: the Online Streaming Act and the Online News Act. Both were designed to counter the digital shift, first by bringing parts of online broadcasting within the regulatory system and, second, by creating a new revenue stream for broadcasters.

These recent government interventions are too little and too late for many communities across Canada. The financial incentives are limited in their scope and have not slowed the demise of private local media. The consequence of this has been a marked reduction in

the number of local media outlets across the country. Essentially, the consolidation of Canada’s private-sector media has led to a diminishment and scarcity of local news—news deprivation, if you will.

News deprivation in Canada

What does news deprivation look like in Canada? The CCPA report News Deprivation: Canadian communities starved for local news provides a current answer to this question by quantifying the changes in local news media over the past 16 years in Canada.

The short answer is these last 16 years have not been kind to local media in Canada. During most years in the 2010s, Canada had a net loss of roughly 25 print outlets a year. In some years, like in 2014, cuts in public broadcasting bumped the total outlets lost to over 30.

The 2010s pale in comparison to what happened to print media in 2023—which stands as the worst year in recent history for the net loss of local print outlets, with the net loss of 83. While 2024 wasn’t quite as catastrophic for local print outlets, it marked the worst year on record for the net loss of private broadcasting outlets, with a loss of 14.5.

Between 2008 and 2024, there were major losses in local media

news but, over the same period, Canada’s population rose by a quarter—from 33 million to 41 million.

While Canadian communities are much bigger in 2024, the news we receive about them continues to shrink. Of course, the start date of changes in local media may also influence the results because there were plenty of closures prior to 2008.

For smaller communities (under 100,000 people), every province and territory except Ontario has seen declines in local news outlets since 2008. Smaller communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, P.E.I., and Manitoba have seen the worst of it. The average Newfoundland and Labrador postal code in smaller communities has seen a quarter of its local news sources disappear. In the smaller communities in Quebec, Alberta and Manitoba, it’s more like one in seven local news outlets have closed.

Loss of local news media in bigger centres (over 100,000) is less universal. Three in five cities are worse off in terms of local news outlets compared to 2008 while 11 per cent of cities haven’t seen a change and 27 per cent of cities have more local news outlets today. It may not be a surprise that strong local news coverage is often found in regional hubs.

At the other end of the spectrum, we find local news deprivation is prevalent in suburban centres located just outside of large cities. These cities have long been included in what Statistics Canada terms Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs), due to the high level of commuter integration between the suburban city and the neighbouring “big” city. For example, Vaughan is highly integrated with Toronto.

It is argued that these cities benefit from the local news generated in the neighbouring big city due to this integration. Regardless, these are cities that have their own municipal governments and have experienced rapid growth since 2008.

Where do we go from here?

The rate of local news deprivation across Canada is snowballing. This analysis demonstrates that the commercial media model that has been dominant in Canada for more than a century is no longer viable. Despite efforts by the federal government to provide financial and regulatory supports for this model, its demise is accelerating. The solution cannot be to shut the lights and lock the door on local news and public affairs.

The demise of the traditional local media model does not signal the demise of the demand for local news and information. Instead, it is time to rethink, rebuild and renew how Canadians access local news and public affairs.

All communities need and deserve access to local news, information and public discourse. It is central to a healthy democracy and engaged communities.

With the increase in climate-related emergencies, it is also essential for the safety of those communities. Moving forward, a more balanced approach needs to be taken to ensure a resilient and responsive network of local media across the country. This can include many parts of the existing media system in Canada taking on new or augmented roles. It may also include new and innovative ways to make better use of existing technologies and resources. The following outlines some suggested next steps.

• A digital shift in local print: Local and community newspapers will need to reset their model, perhaps following innovation by new entrants, like Insauga, a group of community news websites in Southern Ontario that provides free local news supported by micro-targeted advertising. Another example of innovation in print news online is where local journalists are turning to digital solutions to continue to serve their communities, whether through Substack or their own websites, often financed through crowdfunding. Key challenges for these examples are long-term sustainability of each and public awareness of the news provided.

• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: CBC already provides local broadcasting in a number of cities and communities across the country, yet it is not consistent in its existing service, and it has been hesitant and resistant, at times, to take on a larger role in local and regional service. With a proposed more stable funding model, and a growing glut of frequencies freeing up from private hands across the country, now is the time for the CBC to commit more formally to a stronger role in local broadcasting.

• Community media: Community and campus radio and television stations are an entrenched part of the broadcasting ecosystem in Canada yet often overlooked. These broadcasters consistently provide local news and public affairs content. Leveraging these community led media is another important contribution to rebalancing the local news ecosystem.

Over the last 16 years, we have seen a precipitous drop in local news media, despite the expansion of Canada’s population. The brunt of this loss has been in the private media sector, with significant consequences for communities, large and small.

Moving forward, there is an opportunity to rebalance the system by strengthening the role of public and community media, as well as supporting micro-scale private media efforts.

New models of local journalism are necessary for a new century. One thing is certain: nature abhors a vacuum. If responsible local news coverage is lacking, social media will quickly fill the gap—often with misinformation. M

Sonja Macdonald is principal and co-founder of Civicplan.

Marc Edge

Too many communities deprived of local news

It may take decades to dig ourselves out from under the mountain of misinformation, disinformation and plain old BS offered up by Canada’s newspaper industry and its enablers in pursuit of the hundreds of millions in federal bailout money, tax credits and forced subsidies it has pocketed in the past few years.

If we can ever spot the truth through so much propaganda, that is.

The federal government’s stated rationale for introducing the Online News Act in 2022, which aimed to force Google and Meta to pay Canadian newspapers hundreds of millions a year for linking to their news stories, included that “more than 450 news outlets have closed since 2008.”

The number came from questionable data provided by the Local News Research Project (LNRP) at Toronto Metropolitan University, and like Pinocchio’s nose it just keeps growing and growing. By last fall, the number had grown to 525 local news outlets closed in 347 communities across Canada since 2008, according to a LNRP report tabled in the Senate.

These figures would be alarming, if accurate, as Canada’s newspaper industry in 2011 included just over 1,000 community newspapers and about 100 dailies. What is truly alarming is how LNRP data diverge so markedly from the annual inventory taken until recently by industry association News Media Canada.

The LNRP first came to notice in 2017, when a think tank report cited its data and claimed that 225 weekly and 27 daily newspapers

had been lost to closure or merger in more than 210 federal ridings since 2010. The Public Policy Forum’s report The Shattered Mirror was influential in the $595-million news media bailout announced the following year.

A Heritage ministry report published later in 2017, however, plotted NMC data and instead concluded that the number of community newspapers had “remained steady.” The number of dailies has undeniably dropped sharply, mostly because about two dozen free commuter tabloids have closed for lack of advertising, and partly because some dailies have dropped a publication day, usually Mondays.

A spate of closures during the pandemic cut the number of community newspapers from 1,026 in 2019 to 974 in 2020, and the number fell slightly, to about 950, over the next two years. NMC has not updated its inventory since 2022.

Now a new study confirms that the state of local news coverage

is dire, which was already evident from every anecdotal and statistical indicator, but not as dire as the LNRP has been claiming.

“The rate of local news deprivation across Canada is snowballing,” noted the report published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

“The commercial media model that has been dominant in Canada for more than a century is no longer viable. Despite efforts by the federal government to provide financial and regulatory supports for this model, its demise is accelerating. The solution cannot be to shut the lights and lock the door on local news and public affairs.”

The report, co-authored by CCPA Senior Economist David Macdonald and Sonja Macdonald, found that almost 2.5 million Canadians live in a postal code with one or no local news outlet, twice the proportion in 2008.

The number of private broadcasting outlets in radio and TV has shrunk by nine per cent since 2008, they added, with last year being the

worst on record due to a net loss of 14.5 outlets driven by closures by CTV and Corus.

“Some of the biggest declines in smaller communities have been cataclysmic,” their report noted. “Newfoundland and Labrador tops the charts with a loss of 73 per cent of their news sources in the past 16 years.... Only Ontario recorded an increase in print outlets since 2008 in its smaller communities. All provinces or territories reported a decrease in print outlets in smaller communities outside of the big cities.”

The researchers also created a searchable online “news deprivation index” for the 45 cities in Canada of more than 140,000 in population and all capital cities.

The report notes that 2023 was a particularly bad year for local news, with the closure of 83 newspapers due to the bankruptcies of Metroland in Ontario and Métro Média in Quebec.

These two examples point out the real problem with news media in Canada, which is not the dominance of online advertising by Google and Facebook—it’s corporate plundering.

Metroland is the community newspaper division of Torstar, which also publishes the Toronto Star, and was taken over for a bargain price during the pandemic by private equity firm NordStar Capital. It has been profitably piecing off the company ever since, soon floating Torstar’s digital division Verticalscope on the stock market for more than twice what it had paid for the entire company.

It then laid off 605 Metroland workers while converting its 70 community newspapers to online-only publication, audaciously cheating them out of most of the severance pay they were owed by claiming creditor protection in court because it was deeply in debt.

Torstar absurdly retained ownership of Metroland because it was somehow Metroland’s largest creditor. Métro Média declared bankruptcy after the group’s owner looted the company of $2.57 million 2021 after it had received millions in government assistance.

The country’s largest newspaper company, Postmedia Network, continues to buy up smaller chains and cut their costs by laying off staff and closing editions in order to make tens of millions a year in payments on the massive debt held mostly by its U.S. hedge fund owners.

It took over the SaltWire Network chain in Atlantic Canada last year, which soon brought the inevitable cutbacks to editions, journalists and content.

Since it is getting so much in subsidies, including tax credits from the federal bailout, its slice of the $100 million a year Google has promised in order to comply with the Online News Act (Meta blocked news rather than pay publishers) and various provincial programs, Postmedia should now be able to continue making, for the foreseeable future, the more than $30

million in debt payments owed annually to its U.S. hedge fund owners.

How the high finance wizards persuaded Ottawa to hook them up with such rich subsidies is a tale told in my 2023 book The Postmedia Effect, which chronicles their campaign for the 2019 bailout carried out by what I call the Newspaper Lobby.

It was assembled by former Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey, who then retired after making $5 million that year, including bonuses. The intense lobbying campaign included hiring a Liberal insider to personally press senior government ministers, running blank front pages on Postmedia and Torstar newspapers for a day and some wildly inflated data offered up in The Shattered Mirror

I queried LNRP April Lindgren head to no avail at the time on the differences between her data and NMC’s annual inventory, criticisms of her “crowdsourcing” method of data collection, including that it was wide open to fiddling because anyone could post data on its online map. I wrote a 2021 paper chronicling these and other discrepancies in data offered up in support of the bailout, which was published in the peer-reviewed Canadian Journal of Communication. Lindgren responded the following year in a co-authored article published on the LNRP website that claimed the inventory and online map “measure different phenomena. The Local News Map tracks the opening and closing of community newspapers. NMC’s annual snapshot of existing community newspapers is just that—a snapshot of existing publications at a point in time.”

That wasn’t quite true, according to the CCPA study, which utilized LNRP and other datasets, unravelling the problems with its method. These include that it only records the closure of existing news media outlets and not the founding of new ones.

“The Local News Research Project provides the most recent status of a news outlet and, therefore, only a single record per outlet,” it notes. “To correctly create the net change calculation, a record for an outlet’s creation is necessary if it happened between 2008 and 2024.”

When two papers merged to create a new publication, the LNRP would count the closures but no new publications. “A new outlet being produced through a merger doesn’t change the count,” the report noted.

LNMP data are still taken as gospel by Ottawa, but it should be apparent by now that its method amounts to little more than junk science which has served to inflate the diminution of Canada’s news media and thus serve our media overlords. M

Marc Edge teaches Media & Communication at University Canada West in Vancouver. His research on Canadian media can be found online at www.marcedge.com. A version of this article was originally published in Canadian Dimension.

Hamilton, Ontario

Interested in: Local CBC station

Relationship status: Single

In a relationship It’s complicated

Sonja Macdonald and Paul Shaker

A city that wants the CBC (but the feeling isn’t mutual)

As the national public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada has a broad mandate to serve Canadians and to “reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions.” The role of the CBC in local communities has long been a strong element of the public broadcaster’s success, and it presents a key opportunity in the future, in light of the weakening market for private local broadcasting across Canada. While the CBC is present in many of the larger cities across Canada, there are still important gaps in cities and communities, large and small. Through its history, CBC has taken an inconsistent approach to regional service, at times expanding, and other times contracting, its level of local service. As a result, the local and regional approach has large gaps where communities are underserved. One such example is the city of Hamilton. The recent

history of CBC in Hamilton is a telling case study of missed opportunities and future potential for renewing the relevance of CBC/ Radio-Canada.

Hamilton context

The Hamilton Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) is home to 827,679 people. It is the third largest CMA in Ontario (after Toronto and Ottawa), and the 10th largest city in Canada. The population is roughly on par with Winnipeg and Quebec City.

Beginning in the late 1990s and consistently until this year, the city’s private media landscape has been beset by a series of media consolidation and ownership changes, moving the ownership of local media assets further from the community, which has resulted in stripping local news and information reporting.

The most recent example was the abrupt closure of 900 CMHL in August 2024, the city’s only news

and current affairs station. This closure came amidst a larger sell off of local broadcasting assets by Canadian media companies.

Compounding the diminishing local news and information provided through private broadcasters through the last 20+ years of media consolidations is the fact that Hamilton has always been underserved by local CBC radio.

Where other communities of commensurate size (e.g. Quebec City or Winnipeg), and several much smaller, could rely on their local CBC stations to provide local coverage, this has not been the case in Hamilton, thus leaving one of Canada’s top regions without a reasonable and fair level of service from the public broadcaster.

As the private media landscape shifted over the last 20 years, Hamilton residents, city councils and other political representatives have advocated for diversity in the local media environment through regulatory channels, such as at the

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) and directly to the CBC.

Central to this advocacy was recognizing that CBC/ Radio-Canada, as a public broadcaster, plays a unique role in providing local broadcasting services to cities across the county, and that this role only becomes more relevant as consolidation and divestment increases in the private sector.

However, despite continued community advocacy, CBC has missed a number of opportunities over the last 20 years to acquire a radio frequency in Hamilton, which have come available due to private media concentration. Instead, the public broadcaster has provided limited digital local content on its website, which is not commensurate with radio service in similar-sized cities across Canada.

This glaring inconsistency has not gone unnoticed at CBC and was highlighted by Richard Stursberg, former head of CBC’s English Services when he observed in 2012, “The situation is particularly odd if we compare New Brunswick to Hamilton. New Brunswick has three local radio stations (Moncton, Fredericton and Saint John) and a local TV station (Fredericton). Hamilton has no local radio or TV, despite having a population larger than all of New Brunswick.”

Lessons from Hamilton

The Hamilton experience with CBC points to a fundamental lack of accountability within CBC/ Radio-Canada as it relates to local and regional service to communities. This lack of accountability was highlighted by former Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St. Onge in her announcement related to the future of CBC/Radio-Canada. In her press conference on February 20, 2025, Minister St. Onge stated:

“One of the goals when it comes to governance is to bring this public broadcaster closer to people and that’s something we have heard. People have a perception that the public broadcaster isn’t listening to them. That it is not receptive to hearing their points of view.”

“The Canadian population supports the CBC but wants it to be better and wants to be connected with their public broadcaster. This is one of the critiques we consistently hear. Some people feel that the public broadcaster is too opaque and far from their reality and their needs.”

In response to these concerns, the minister proposed amendments to the Broadcasting Act “to require that the Corporation include public consultation on issues related to its priorities and strategies in the context of its corporate plans. The amended Act could require CBC/Radio-Canada to indicate in its corporate plans how it satisfies the public consultation requirement, including the results and ways in which these results influence its decision-making and operations.”

There are several ways that this lack of accountability is illustrated in the Hamilton example. First is through a lack of coherent and equitable policy and associated strategies to support local and regional service. Second is a lack of innovative digital strategy to support and supplement local and regional service. Finally, a lack of leadership in building the needed community relationships to better serve communities across Canada.

Opportunities

The Hamilton experience provides key lessons for the CBC more broadly. Looking ahead, the Hamilton case study highlights potential opportunities for the public broadcaster to become more relevant to Canadians in the future:

• CBC/Radio-Canada needs to clearly articulate a local/regional policy with tangible measures that can act as a benchmark from which legislative goals, public consultation, accountability and transparency can be assessed.

• CBC should fulfill the original promise of the Hamilton digital service and provide the full range of programming of a local station through the digital means available. This Hamilton model could be an innovative and cost-effective way to expand CBC local services to other communities across Canada.

• CBC should take advantage of local frequencies becoming available and the diminishment of the commercial radio model. CBC could expand its footprint in markets where private radio is shrinking and innovate to provide local content through a blend of traditional terrestrial and digital delivery.

• When looking to expand and add resources: CBC should listen to where community support is strong. Invest in communities where CBC is wanted and needed.

For CBC/Radio-Canada to forge a path forward, the broadcaster needs to expand its footprint to better serve more Canadian communities. It needs to focus its priorities by investing at the local and regional level, where it is better able to connect directly with Canadians, to better reflect these communities both to themselves and to the rest of the country. CBC/Radio-Canada’s long-term sustainability is only feasible through building its support and relevance from communities across the country to a national level.

To read the full report, Mixed Signals: Lessons from CBC’s experience in Hamilton, click here: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/ mixed-signals/ M

Sonja Macdonald is a principal with Civicplan, a firm specializing in participatory planning, public engagement, and community strategies. Paul Shaker is a principal and co-founder of Civicplan.

Trish Hennessy

CBC/Radio-Canada: a trusted Canadian symbol

Like many of us, I grew up with the CBC as a daily and vital part of my life.

The family would whip up a bowl of popcorn and gather for Hockey Night in Canada.

CBC’s The National was the last thing we watched before heading to bed.

Mr. Dressup. The Beachcombers. The Irish Rovers. These were iconic CBC shows that entertained me in my youth—and gave me a sense of what it meant to be Canadian.

It’s far from perfect—I have my beefs—but I’m not alone in having a sentimental attachment

to the CBC. In February, the CCPA commissioned Environics Research to conduct a series of focus group discussions with Canadians to better understand their perceptions of public service broadcasting in general, and CBC/Radio-Canada in specific.

These interviews were conducted in the context of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s “defund the CBC” political slogans.

Key findings

It wasn’t planned this way, but we happened to conduct our focus group research during a unique

moment in Canadian history: U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs, economic warfare, and annexing Canada as a “51st state” has heightened Canadians’ sense of national pride.

The CBC/Radio-Canada readily found its way into this expression of pride.

For most participants, the CBC/ Radio-Canada was seen as a national icon. At a time when we as a country feel vulnerable and threatened by the U.S., participants valued the CBC-Radio Canada as a reflection of who we are and believe that it’s an institution worth keeping.

Collage CCPA, photos iStock

In short, there is a lot of love for the CBC/ Radio-Canada. The CBC/Radio Canada is a “constant companion” for many of the focus group participants.

“We had a railway 150 years ago to tie Canada together,” said one focus group participant. “CBC is one of those things that ties Canada together.”

“If you wanted to make Canada the 51st state, the first thing you’d have to do is destroy our cultural identity,” said another, citing the CBC as being instrumental to our identity.

“It’s a part of our heritage,” said another. “It’s been there forever and it brought so many important events in our lives.”

If the CBC gets defunded, “might as well burn my books,” said another.

Alan Maitland on the radio telling The Shepherd story at Christmas time. Kim’s Convenience.

Reservation Dogs. Schitt’s Creek. Radio in Inuvik. CBC Gem podcasts and documentaries. This is the background to so many Canadians’ lives, even today.

“The content CBC has made in the last five years has been some of the best content,” said one younger participant. “Amazing podcasts that people share around the world because it’s so incredible. Content you won’t get anywhere else. Why would you want to kill the soul of Canadian media?”

“It would be devastating to our country and to the ability to have quality content that is representative of lots of diverse voices and stories from small areas all over the country,” said another.

Aside from enjoying the content, focus group participants saw the CBC/Radio-Canada as an important source of unity.

“I believe it’s essential,” said another younger participant. “It’s cool to see older people’s views on this. Its role should be to unite the country.”

“It’s the one thing that everyone has access to,” said another participant. “It’s the keeper of Canadian culture. It unites us.”

Many focus group participants also saw the CBC/ Radio-Canada as a pillar of democracy and equity.

“It’s a watchdog and guardian of our democratic rights,” said one.

“It connects the entire country and people who don’t normally have access get it,” said another.

“Misinformation/disinformation is already a problem in society,” said one. “[Without the CBC it] would spread more rapidly because there’s no way to verify that information against an unbiased source.”

Many participants appreciated CBC coverage of Indigenous Peoples’ stories and issues, as well as stories of people who never get airtime on private networks. They also appreciated how the CBC reflects the diversity of Canadian culture, arts, and music.

Most participants understood the role of the public broadcaster to be at “arm’s length” to the government, to provide service to underserved communities, to provide unbiased news coverage across the country, and to ensure Canadians of all backgrounds see themselves reflected back to them.

Profit motive isn’t a factor, and many participants worried a Canada without the CBC would lead to billionaire-backed media outlets with a slanted point of view that could feed disinformation. In short, they worry what’s happening in the U.S. could happen here. Quebec participants talked about how all news would come from Peladeau and Desmarais if it wasn’t for Radio-Canada.

“I trust what I hear from CBC news more than anyone else,” said one participant. “They’re in it for a different reason.”

“Its #1 priority is to serve the people rather than to serve profits.”

Collage CCPA, photos iStock

“If CBC fell apart, we would lose Canada. It holds our nation together.”

Perspectives on defunding the CBC

Most participants had heard of the Conservative party’s intention to defund the CBC. Some didn’t believe it will ever come to pass. Some believed it was being said to “rile up their base.”

Overall, participants seemed to believe that the CBC presents mostly unbiased news and adheres to strong journalistic standards.

A number of them worry about more U.S.-style news infiltrating Canadian news networks.

“I think we just have to watch what’s happening in the states and the war on information and data,” said one participant. “The war on information sharing is to allow you to control the narrative. If we don’t hear about inequities, then it doesn’t happen. It’s to control the narrative and to silence your critics.”

“You do need a voice for the smaller towns,” said one. “Everyone deserves a voice.”

Some participants said the CBC sets the standard for unbiased journalism in Canada and worry about a “rapid deterioration” of stands in other news outlets if the CBC were to be defunded.

“People count on CBC. The trust. It would be horrible.”

Focus group participants boiled it down to these key takeaways:

• We need the CBC now more than ever. In the face of U.S. tensions, the CBC/Radio-Canada should be a source of national unity and pride, reflecting the Canadian identity.

• Billionaire-owned media would hurt democracy and our sense of togetherness.

• Everyone deserves access to the CBC-Radio Canada. Service in remote and rural communities is especially important to our own democracy.

• Loss of media needs to be stemmed; CBC should play a role in reducing news deserts.

• Defunding the CBC would take away jobs in communities that need local news.

• The CBC/Radio-Canada represent value for money.

There’s room for improvement at the CBC, but the focus group findings were resoundingly in favour of the public broadcaster. In all my years of conducting focus group research—on topics ranging from child care, income inequality, regulation, and taxation—I’ve never heard Canadian pride shine as much as it did in this round of research. The CBC is undoubtedly a Canadian icon. M

Trish Hennessy is the editor of the Monitor

WHAT IS THE CBC?

“CBC is one of those things that ties Canada together.”

“If you wanted to make Canada the 51st state, the first thing you’d have to do is destroy our cultural identity.”

“It’s a part of our heritage... It’s been there forever and it brought so many important events in our lives.”

“It’s cool to see older people’s views on this. Its role should be to unite the country.”

“It’s the one thing that everyone has access to... It unites us.”

“It’s a watchdog and guardian of our democratic rights.”

“It connects the entire country and people who don’t normally have access get it.”

“[Without the CBC misinformation/disinformation] would spread more rapidly because there’s no way to verify that information against an unbiased source.”

“I trust what I hear from CBC news more than anyone else. They’re in it for a different reason.”

“Its #1 priority is to serve the people rather than to serve profits.”

“If CBC fell apart, we would lose Canada. It holds our nation together.”

Maxim Fortin

What is CBC/Radio-Canada’s role in the future of Quebec media?

Ample research has painted a bleak picture: the crisis facing the media world is exacerbating the decline of democracy. While authoritarian populism and the far right have been on the rise, the availability and accessibility of information has sharply declined, particularly information from media sources that follow the standards and practices of professional journalism.

To make matters worse, we have seen politicians, such as Pierre Poilievre, running on promises to defund public media. In 2023, Poilievre pledged to “defund the CBC” under his leadership, calling it a biased outlet that serves no justified purpose. As far as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada is concerned, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation / Société Radio-Canada is an unnecessary public entity.

If CBC/Radio-Canada were privatized, the argument goes, then private news media companies could take over the role it currently plays and generate profits while doing so, without relying on taxpayer dollars. The problem is the business model underpinning this theory has collapsed in recent years and is no longer viable. Finding ways to better support the vital work of the news media sector is essential to restoring and maintaining a healthy democracy. We propose that public support for CBC/Radio-Canada be increased.

How the media crisis started

To understand how we got here, we need to understand the magnitude of the crisis facing Canadian media.

Between 2008 and 2024, 101 local media outlets closed their doors, and 37 others scaled back their operations in Quebec. In 2023 and 2024, Quebecor cut more than 600 jobs in Quebec, while Bell closed or sold 54 radio stations across Canada, centralized its programming operations, and cut 6,100 jobs.

In some parts of Quebec, the number of journalists dropped by 30 per cent between 2006 and 2016.

Worse still, in rural areas, where journalism coverage is already weakest, the number of workers in journalism decreased by approximately 20 per cent.

The decline of media has made outlets unable to do their job, especially local news reporting. The undermining of local news began in the 2000s with mergers, acquisitions and the formation of media conglomerates, and the digital media boom of the 2010s led by Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon brought the crisis to unprecedented heights.

Over time, the Big Four tech giants came to capture more than two thirds of the $22 billion annual revenue of the Canadian advertising market, depriving media outlets of their primary source of revenue.

In 2022, daily newspapers in Quebec still made 60 per cent of their revenue from advertising. The numbers were even higher for conventional television (85 per cent), regional weeklies (93 per cent) and radio stations (97 per cent).

Between 2012 and 2020, advertising revenue dropped by $375 million for daily newspapers, $190 million for television, $111 million

for weeklies and $114 million for magazines.

The collapse in ad sales underscores the importance of publicly funded media. The broken business model of news media has reignited conversations about public funding, especially for Canada’s leading media institution: CBC/ Radio-Canada.

Underfunding Canada’s public broadcaster

CBC/Radio-Canada receives public funding in the form of government appropriations and has three sources of self-generated revenue: 1) advertising revenue, 2) subscriber fees for discretionary services, and 3) financing and other income.

Historically, government appropriations have accounted for 60 per cent of total CBC/ Radio-Canada funding, with self-generating revenue as a secondary funding source coming in at under 40 per cent. Advertising revenue makes up approximately 20 per cent of its total funding, and financing income is typically less than 10 per cent.

CBC/Radio-Canada faced substantial cuts to its funding on multiple occasions in the 1980s and 1990s.

Brian Mulroney reduced CBC/ Radio-Canada’s budget by $85 million in 1984, then by another $240 million toward the end of the decade.

In the 1990s, Jean Chrétien implemented a $227 million cut and imposed austerity measures into 1998.

In 2012, Stephen Harper announced $115 million in cuts

over three years. Only in 2016 did CBC/Radio-Canada finally get a break, when Justin Trudeau pledged an additional investment of $675 million over five years.

The 2016 funding boost was not enough to undo the damage wrought by three decades of cutbacks. Funding for CBC/Radio-Canada has not kept pace with the Consumer Price Index since the 1980s, and investment in the institution declined further and further between 1985 and 2024. As our analysis shows:

“The $837 million in government appropriations granted in 1984-1985 would be worth $2.1 billion in 2024 dollars. That’s far higher than the $1.4 billion in appropriations granted for 2023–2024. Adjusting for inflation, there is a $667 million difference between the 1984-1985 appropriations and the 2023-2024 appropriations. In other words, CBC/Radio-Canada’s public funding has been slashed by 32 per cent since 1984.

“These appropriations account for an ever-shrinking fraction of the federal government’s total spending. In 1990-1991, its share was 0.68 per cent. In 2009-2010, it was 0.42 per cent. Since 2020, government appropriations for CBC/Radio-Canada have amounted to less than 0.30 per cent of projected federal spending, and only 0.26 per cent in 2023-2024.”

It is unsurprising, then, that Nordicity’s latest report has Canada ranked 18th out of 20 countries in financial support for public media. In fact, Canada is part of a group of countries rated as having low levels of public media funding (less than $50 per capita), even though CBC/Radio-Canada is the only public media outlet in the world that operates two distinct services and produces content in two languages.

In addition, public media funding is unpredictable and allocated on a year-to-year basis, resulting in short-term management strategies, and the discretionary nature of the funding makes CBC/ Radio-Canada leadership vulnerable to political and partisan pressures.

Ways to improve the CBC/Radio-Canada

We at the Institut de Recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques (IRIS) propose three measures that would bolster support for CBC/Radio-Canada:

1. Restore and stabilize CBC/Radio-Canada’s funding.

2. Give CBC/Radio-Canada’s board of directors greater autonomy.

3. Develop a digital strategy for CBC/Radio-Canada that is not driven by profit motives.

We propose that CBC/Radio-Canada’s public funding be planned over a five-year horizon and correspond to a minimum of $50 per capita.

We propose that a public representative and an employee representative be added to CBC/

Radio-Canada’s board of directors and that the chair be appointed by the board rather than the government.

And we propose that CBC/Radio-Canada have a strategy for digital development that is not contingent on pressures of profitability.

We believe that these actions will provide better support to Canada’s public broadcaster and enhance its ability to produce, disseminate and deliver reliable news coverage—a cornerstone of any functioning democracy. M

Maxim Fortin holds a PhD in Political Science at Laval University.

Soirée du Samedi soir / Wikimedia

LOCAL NEWS IS SINKING FAST

“The rate of local news deprivation across Canada is snowballing and the ad-funded local news model that has been dominant in Canada for more than a century is no longer viable. New models of local journalism are necessary for a new century, whether expanding public media, like the CBC, community broadcasting or supporting local print journalism with federal subsidies. If we don’t have responsible local news, social media will happily fill the gap—usually with misinformation.”

—Sonja Macdonald, co-author News Deprivation

Canadian communities are starving for local news

Devastation of the local print news industry

Since 2008, we’ve seen a net loss of 11% of print media outlets (whether newspapers or online). We’ve lost 25 print media outlets a year since 2014.

Private broadcasting is also shrinking

We’ve lost 9% of local broadcast news outlets since 2008. The worst year on record was 2024, with the net loss of 14.5 private broadcasting outlets.

2.5 million Canadians have almost no local news

This accounts for 7% of Canadians, up from 3% a decade and a half ago.

However, the more common situation for most Canadians is that they have some local news coverage but are in a state of constant news deprivation.

Nearly all of Canada saw a decline in small town news

Smaller towns, those with less than 30,000 people, have seen one in 10 news outlets close in the past decade and a half. In all provinces and territories except Ontario, we’re seeing net losses of local news in towns with less than 100,000 people. Smaller communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, P.E.I., and Manitoba have seen the worst of it.

NEWS DEPRIVATION INDEX

Tracking 45 of Canada’s big cities and provincial capitals

CCPA has created a news deprivation index to see if local news is keeping up to population growth. We tracked 45 cities with more than 140,000 people and all our capital cities. Here is what we found at a glance:

• Three in five cities had a net loss of local news outlets

• The cities with the least news deprivation are regional hubs that produce broadcast content for the remainder of their province or territory. These include Yellowknife and Whitehorse, Saint John, N.B., St. John’s, NL, Charlottetown, P.E.I

• The cities with the most news deprivation are the suburbs of larger centres: the suburbs in the Greater Toronto Area, Grand Montréal and Metro Vancouver populations have grown quickly but local news hasn’t kept pace or has declined

• Vaughan, Langley and Surrey experienced among the largest losses of local outlets and, partially as a result, they also have among the worst local news deprivation. On a rare bright side, Kelowna has gained news outlets and has a relatively low news deprivation

L.E. Fox

The truth about the CBC in Northern Canada

It’s complicated, but the North needs CBC

Around dinner time on the evening of May 10, 2024, communication services in the Yukon—internet, cell phone, and landline— wavered, guttered like a struck match, and went out.

The outage was sudden and complete; every cell phone was bricked, every landline buzzed with

a frantic dial tone, every browser, every bank machine and pay pad beeped in sad, non-operational confusion, their connection to the outside world severed.

Perhaps more urgently, all emergency services—911, fire, police, EMS, all systems tied to communication services—went down with it. If you needed help,

you were on your own to get it. You either had to go to the police station or hospital yourself. Even when you got there, all internet-based services, like databases or diagnostics, would likewise be offline.

Easy access to information—not just email, text, and calls, but news about safety, infrastructure

Former CBC North studio in Iqaluit /Wikipedia

damage, and transportation delays—was likewise offline.

At the precise moment this occurred, I was bent over the tiny screen of my cell phone, having a beer with a friend visiting from out of town and scrolling through menu options for dinner. One minute they were loading, the next minute they weren’t. There was a brief pause in conversation as the tables around us slowly registered the same disruption. Above our heads, the speakers piping music—streamed, of course—into the pub crackled and abruptly went silent.

An article in The Guardian, by a Toronto-based writer, described what followed as “chaos quickly set[ting] in,” which is frankly hilarious, untrue, and exactly the reason publications should cultivate good relationships with journalists who live in the communities they’re reporting on, as opposed to phoning it in some 6,000 km away.

Communication outages are common in the Yukon (and the North in general), as our communications system, while slowly improving, is frankly delicate. In January of this year, several high northern communities lost all connectivity for several days due to a satellite malfunction, and I’m currently hot spotting because my cell phone is working but not my internet, which has been down for the last 12 hours.

The North does not have a robust, interconnected, multi-service provider network of communications services the way the South does. We have a janky patchwork of linear, interlinked services primarily supplied by one provider, Northwestel, with occasional and quite limited assists from private companies like Starlink—a system that spans thousands of kilometres of remote, often frozen wilderness, across which some 120,000 people are scattered, totally reliant on a handful of flimsy cables and distantly orbiting satellites to speak to the rest of the world.

It only takes one or two little things going wrong— malfunctioning software updates, hardware failures, fires, a careless backhoe operator, floods, landslides, even a beaver building a dam in the wrong place— to cause service interruptions.

If you live here, you expect this shit to break at least once or twice a year.

Ergo, what actually happened that evening in May when cell, internet, and landline service went dead was that the Yukoners in the room briefly conferred in companionable murmurs (a lone table of Vancouverites outed themselves by proceeding to freak out), determined that yes, internet and cell service was down, which was inconvenient, but certainly not abnormal, and proceeded to order another round of drinks.

When it became apparent the issue wasn’t going to be resolved anytime soon, the serving staff took

drivers’ licenses and phone numbers and simply opened tabs for the diners to pay when service resumed.

These disruptions usually last about 12 hours or so, but when we received news that the cause of the outage was a raging forest fire burning out of control near Fort Nelson, B.C, burning a section of the fibre optic cable system to a smoking crisp, we adjusted our expectations.

It’s rather difficult to replace a fibre cable in a raging inferno. Over the next 48-ish hours, while it was cash-only for essentials like gas and groceries, many restaurants continued to run tabs. Every single one of which was paid, according to the servers I asked, anyways.

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) services were down, but outside of Whitehorse, EMS and evacuation services aren’t common anyways. When I got up the following morning, I received an update on the situation, and realized service would likely continue to be out for some time.

I shrugged, threw my back country medical kit in my car, and proceeded with my day. I’m Wilderness Advanced First Aid certified and a lack of emergency medical services qualifies as a wilderness medical situation.

How did I get that update, though? How did we know the outage was caused by a forest fire? How did we know to expect a lengthy repair time? How did we know we were not, say, at the slow, creeping beginning of a low-budget science fiction movie, about to be beset upon by the alien invasion already ravaging the rest of the world?

Because even when the internet and phone lines are down, radio—not Sirius or streaming, but good, old-fashioned, FM radio—works. In fact, when the communications systems go down, it’s the only thing that works.

Which means that CBC is the only local but interconnected—never mind standardized and unionized—information service in the entire North that functions without cell phone or internet service.

Which means that in an emergency—natural or otherwise—CBC is the only established, trusted system for information dispersal in all three territories, an area which, my dear little cheechako, represents about 40 per cent of the entire country.

Which means that when you talk about public broadcasting, you’re talking about the communication, safety, and security of Northern people and their communities.

Which also means that when you talk about defunding—even doing away with—public broadcasting, you’re talking about defunding—even damaging—the communication, safety, and security of Northern people and their communities.

Now look—I’m not going to sit here, as a Northern, working-class journalist, and tell you the CBC is an irreproachable jewel of democratic free press in this country. I’ve got $42.34 in my bank account: cigarettes are expensive, and I frankly can’t justify the cost of the butane and tobacco blowing that kind of smoke up your ass would take.

The CBC is in obvious and serious need of reform. I could not, in good conscience, refute this. I’ve worked as a freelancer for CBC, I’ve been interviewed by CBC as a source, I have friends and colleagues who work for CBC, and I will be the very first person in line to tell you it’s a bloated, inefficient system with a toxic, often deeply colonial and paternalistic work culture.

While there are many excellent reporters—especially young reporters—working for the CBC, the broadcaster’s rusty institutional structures and moldering, bourgeois values have led to an institution more interested in maintaining the status quo, empty virtue signaling, and making the white upper-middle class of this country feel safe, cozy, and unchallenged than doing what a national news organization is supposed to do.

What CBC is supposed to do is disseminate high-quality, well-researched, fairly reported news and information that holds power to account for public consumption in a reliable, standardized format.

The logical conclusion to this problem, however, is not to defund the CBC—any more than the solution to long wait times, doctor shortages, and poor access to services is to defund public health care. As we have seen with the rise of the fascist right, a healthy media ecosystem is essential to healthy democracies; Canada needs a healthy public broadcasting system now more than ever, especially in the North.

Frankly, economically and politically speaking, defunding

CBC in the North is patently stupid. The private sector will not fill the void doing away with the CBC would create, nor would it do so in a way that would provide media services of superior—or even equal—quality, as is often argued.

That kind of thinking is inherently urban, Southern, and classist.

In order for that to happen, you’d need the customer base to support the new private services, which you might be able to get in dense urban areas, but you absolutely won’t find in rural ones, especially in the North.

There are private broadcasters in the North—Cabin Radio, for example, does great work—but the struggle to fund that work is a constant and ongoing issue.

Northern media has all the same problems with ad revenue and readership and balancing the books as everywhere else, with the added burden of serving huge territories with far flung communities in multiple languages in regions where the total population rarely exceeds 50,000 people.

While most communities have a local radio station, CBC—specifically, here, CBC North—is the only common denominator. There are approximately 134 radio stations in the territories, including weather, government-run information

services, and private and public talk and news stations; of those 58 are run by CBC, and another 14 are CBC rebroadcast networks, meaning they rely on CBC for news and programming.

Added together, this means CBC North makes up a little over 50 per cent of the news and information not reliant on the internet in the North.

When you remove unmanned government info service stations, like weather and road conditions, that number jumps to about 60 per cent.

Without the CBC, the economic reality is that there wouldn’t be consistent, high-quality broadcasting services for the territories.

Likewise, to argue that defunding the CBC is the solution to the problems the institution is facing requires some fancy freaking footwork by the current pro-nationalist, “Arctic sovereignty”, “Elbows up” pundits on the right, howling for increased Northern military defence.

The North is a massive, remote region with unstable communications infrastructure, few redundancies, and a low and sparsely distributed population.

Defunding the CBC—which, again, is the only standard, consistent, reliable information source in the case of an emergency or service disruption in the North—when you are trying to improve military and public security is the very definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

To argue defunding the CBC is the solution requires some fancy freaking footwork

The recently completed fibre optic upgrade on the Dempster Highway—a roughshod road that connects Dawson City, YT to Inuvik, NWT—cost more than $85 million and nearly 20 years to complete. I would be hard pressed to believe upgrading Northern systems to increase military security in lieu of public broadcasting would be a cost-saving measure for the Canadian government.

These—rather clear and rational—fiscal, political, and structural

reasons to support the CBC in the North are important, as the calls to defund it actually highlight an underlying problem within the Canadian political mind. To the kind of politico who would defund the CBC, the “North” is worth investing in—but the people who live in the North? Not so much, especially when those peoples are First Nations. So much has been said and is being said and will be said about the “value” of the North: to defence, to resource extraction, to critical minerals, to national identity. Those values, however, are being espoused by Southerners, most of whom have spent only a handful of days in the territory on fly-in-fly-outs, who don’t understand the unique cultures and communities that make up everything above the 60th parallel.

They come here either to take or to convince Northerners why taking is the right thing to do.

This mindset is, at its core, extractive and colonial, and fails to consider the impact of Southern decisions on Northern people beyond the access to Northern resources it gives them.

The communities most powerfully impacted by the loss of the CBC—and the safety, news, and connective systems it represents—would indisputably be First Nation ones, because those are the communities where those services are already the most vulnerable and underserved.

For example, the Yukon has been deep in the grip of a severe mental health care and addiction crisis for nearly a decade.

In March 2024, the Government of Canada announced $86 million in federal funding for health care—particularly mental health and addictions services—in the Yukon; at approximately 40,000 people in the territory, that’s about $2,150 per person. That looks like a fair chunk of change, until you compare

it to the $250 million—$6,250 per person—the feds dropped on the Yukon Resource Gateway Project, which provides funding to build roads to improve access for resource extraction projects in the territory.

Put plainly, the feds are willing to spend three times more per person to pay for infrastructure that almost exclusively benefits private mining and exploration companies—private enterprises largely owned and run by outside people and businesses—in the North than they are willing to spend on the mental and physical health of the people who actually live in the North. That the profits those companies generate often come directly from the lands and resources of First Nations peoples—who have lower access to health care and suffer three times the average national suicide rate—says more than it doesn’t about the South’s relationship the North.

To defund the CBC in the name of the “national” interest is to dance to the same tune: even if you can make an economic argument for it, the people who would pay most dearly for the loss of the services CBC provides are Northerns, particularly Indigenous ones. M

L.E.

Leave a legacy that reflects your lifelong convictions.

A legacy gif t is a gif t wit h lasting meaning. It ʼs a way to share your passion for social, economic and environmental justice, and shape t he lives of t hose who come af ter you.

Leaving a legacy gif t is one of t he most valuable ways to help t he Canadian Centre for Policy Alter natives press for c hange.

Katie Lof tus would be happy to assist you wit h your gif t planning. Katie can be reac hed at 613-563-1341 ext. 318 or at katie@policyalter natives.ca.

Fox is a freelance environment and social justice reporter and the author of This Has Always Been a War and This Book Is A Knife. They live in Whitehorse, Yukon, with their dog and a lot of fishing gear.

Geoff Bickerton

The Liberals have a mandate to improve CBC funding

Here’s the case for it

One of the key issues the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, went into Canada’s spring federal election campaign cut to the heart of Canadiana: Defund the CBC.

According to Poilievre, the CBC was a “drain on public finances”, provided biased reporting and was irrelevant to Canadian society. According to Poilievre, private sector networks could easily replace the CBC and provide the services that it provides.

The Conservatives lost the election to the Liberals—and Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised to increase CBC funding, not gut it. There’s a strong case for this approach.

Bang for Your Buck finds CBC critics wrong

In February 2025, the CCPA released a report that I wrote, Bang for Our Buck, which examined the issue of public trust and viewership, and contained a comparison detailing the very low rate of public funding the CBC/Radio-Canada received compared to public broadcasters in 18 other countries. The findings revealed a far different reality than the one painted by the Conservatives.

CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada’s most trusted media network

Public opinion polls indicate that among Francophones in Canada, Radio-Canada is the most trusted

news source, with 78 per cent of respondents reporting they find it trustworthy.

TVA, Quebec’s public TV broadcaster, comes a close second, with 69 per cent reporting they find TVA trustworthy.

Among anglophones, CBC is the most trusted news source, with 67 per cent of respondents reporting they find it trustworthy.

CTV comes a close second, with 62 per cent reporting they find it trustworthy.

These levels of public trust for CBC/Radio-Canada are far greater than the trust reported for other media outlets and social media.

In fact, the vast majority of Canadians regularly tune into CBC/ Radio-Canada.

Collage CCPA, photos iStock

Fully 78 per cent of francophones report they watch Radio-Canada regularly or occasionally. Among anglophones, 64 per cent report they watch CBC regularly or occasionally, making it the most watched English television network.

Comparatively, CBC/Radio-Canada receives very little public funding

On a per capita basis, public funding in Canada for CBC/Radio-Canada represents less than $36 a year— or less than 10 cents a day.

In fact, public funding for CBC/Radio-Canada amounted to only 0.12 per cent of total government expenditures, which is 50 per cent less than the international average of 0.242 per cent.

That’s a mere drop in the bucket to pay for public broadcasting that goes from the depths of the North all the way to Newfoundland and Labrador.

On average, the 18 other countries examined in Bang for Your Buck spend twice as much of total government expenditures on their public service broadcasters than Canada.

Among those 18 other countries, only three had lower per capita spending on public service media than Canada: the U.S., New Zealand, and Portugal. Bang for our Buck shows the many ways in which public broadcasting funding in Canada is good value for Canadians:

Public broadcasting costs less in Canada: CBC/ Radio-Canada receives much less revenue from government than most of the countries in the international sample—nearly 60 per cent less. In 2022, it received $32.43, on a per capita basis on average, while the average, per capita, public funding of public service broadcasters in the other 18 countries in the survey was $78.76.

There is less reliance on government and more on commercial sources of funding: CBC/Radio-Canada relies more on revenue from commercial sources than most public broadcasters in other countries. Only three public broadcasters in the sample—Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand—relied on advertising and sponsorship revenues more than CBC/Radio Canada.

Overall, the cost to individual Canadian taxpayers is only 41 per cent of the average for taxpayers in other countries. In a country as large and sparsely populated as Canada, this is remarkable. Given the need to address local, regional and national issues—in English and French—in a huge country with low population density, there is every reason to strengthen its funding.

CCPA research in action

As well as publishing Bang for our Buck, the CCPA published a series of other reports about the worsening lack of local news availability in Canada, the need to fill the void of disappearing privately owned news publications and outlets, and findings from

focus group research the CCPA did with Environics Research about how Canadians perceive the CBC/ Radio-Canada. Montreal-based think tank IRIS did a separate report on Radio-Canada’s value.

Following the publication of these research reports, a union representing the CBC, the Association of Professionals and Supervisors (APS) sent a letter to all of the leaders of the political parties, which provided them with the findings in the reports and asked for the position their party would take with respect to the future of the CBC.

Almost immediately following this request, Mark Carney issued a statement promising that the Liberals would increase funding to the CBC by $150 million to enable the CBC to strengthen local news with more local bureaus and reporters.

He also promised to establish a new mandate, which would require a level of long-term funding in line with that of other national public broadcasters.

Soon after Carney’s response, APS received a written response from the Bloc Québécois, which was in line with Carney’s statement. The NDP has a long history of supporting the CBC.

The research reports produced by IRIS and the CCPA have provided much clarity to the support and trust that Canadians have with respect to the CBC.

The new government has made promises that would address the underfunding of the CBC and hopefully lead to expanded and improved services.

As the APS has stated: “The IRIS and CCPA reports lead to one overwhelming conclusion. We need to expand CBC/Radio-Canada, not defund it. With the enormous decline in private sector television, radio and print media the CBC is needed more than ever.

“Democratic societies depend on an informed population receiving truthful, objective information from trained journalists, not self-serving spin from public relations professionals. Faced with threats to our economy and national sovereignty, we need more accurate news coverage and analysis. Expansion of CBC/Radio-Canada is now more necessary than ever.

“In conclusion, it is worth noting the comments of Guillaume Hébert, author of the IRIS report, reflecting on the decline of accurate journalism he states: There’s a risk with this. We’ll end up with more and more actors in the public sphere who aren’t there to produce balanced information or aim for objectivity, but who serve a political or commercial interest. This can be detrimental to democracy.”

The CBC seems safe, for now. But if history repeats itself, there will be another election in two years or less. There is no reason to believe that the attack on public broadcasting in Canada is over.

Hopefully, the discussion concerning the future of the CBC will be based on well-researched facts and not ideologically driven fiction. M

Geoff Bickerton is former research director at the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

Simon Enoch

Quality news matters in rural Canada

Communities in Canada— particularly smaller communities—are starving for local news coverage.

Rural communities are particularly hard hit, as they rarely have alternative news sources to turn to if they lose what is often their only news media outlet.

When one first hears of the concept of a news desert—a region completely devoid of any local news media or journalism— the first reaction is that these must be places infested with misinformation, as people become entirely dependent on social media for their news sources.

The good news is that, while research is still emerging, this doesn’t seem to be the case, or at least persons within news deserts appear to be no more susceptible to misinformation than those who are served by local news media. This may have a lot to do with the fact that much of the news content available on the internet and social media often derives from traditional media sources.

This certainly does not mean that news deserts are benign—far from it. While the threat of misinformation may be overstated,

the role of local news media in building community relations, fostering civic engagement and as a vital bulwark against local political corruption has been well established.

Too often, the idea of a news desert can leave us thinking in a simple binary—local news good, no local news bad. What I want to argue is that, even for those communities that do currently have their own local news media, the quality of that news media should be equally important.

The mere existence of local news media is not some guarantor of democracy. They also need to provide critical, investigative and original reportage of issues of concern to the community.

In western Canada, we have seen a host of rural news media consolidated under single companies. While these communities might have a putative newspaper (print or web-based) in name, in reality, the content is often highly standardized and reproduced across the chain.

The potential for original reportage and investigative journalism at these types of outlets is obviously limited. Moreover, because these outlets are often more concerned

with generating profits than they are with providing original content, they can easily fall prey to ‘journalistic boosterism.’

This is where local news media operates more as a cheerleader for local business interests than as a critical chronicler of local issues.

Rural journalists have always walked a fine line in this regard, but it has only become more acute as these chain outlets chase profits rather than stories.

The concern is that rural news media—for fear of offending local advertisers or local sources of power or even the wider community—will avoid controversial issues, regardless of how important they may be.

In such a landscape, we can easily see the benefit of a public broadcaster, which, while not entirely immune to these pressures, would no doubt be more protected from their influence.

CBC’s Local Journalism Project is one initiative that could see rural journalists remain embedded within their communities, but not be as subject to some of the commercial and political pressures that for-profit media experiences.

This would be a return to the CBC’s original mission as a public broadcaster, to ensure that Canadians are receiving news and information that is not subject to the influence of powerful commercial interests.

If we truly value the contribution that journalism makes to democracy, it shouldn’t be enough that a community merely has access to local news media, but that it has access to high-quality, well-resourced, and independent news media. M

Simon Enoch is a CCPA senior researcher based in Regina.

Anton Clark

The promise of social planning

Revisiting the CBC’s Citizens Forum

During the spring federal election, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre doubled down on claims that the CBC is out of touch—elitist, irrelevant, bloated. Whether or not one agrees, especially in light of growing U.S. incursions on Canadian cultural sovereignty, his attacks raise a deeper question: does the CBC’s public image still reflect its mandate of non-partisan, democratic participation?

How should we read the function of the CBC in an information landscape increasingly shaped by corporate retrenchment?

With Meta scaling back its content moderation teams, X gutting its safety operations, and generative AI poised to flood public discourse with disinformation, what role does Canada’s public

broadcaster have to play in a climate of a weaponized U.S. media apparatus?

With two-thirds of Canadians reliant on social media for news, the stakes are high. If the CBC is in an image crisis, then perhaps the right approach isn’t to defend what the CBC has been, but to reimagine what it can be.

Here, a question looms: why not meet this moment of institutional doubt with one of the CBC’s most ambitious precedents—not just reporting on the state of the nation, but helping shape it?

Starting in the 1940s, Canada’s public broadcaster experimented with something bold: programming that treated everyday people as planners of the country’s future. It wasn’t tabloid-ism. It was reconstruction. And maybe—in

a world spinning from inflation, housing crises, and great-power realignments—it’s time to reignite that spirit.

It’s time to consider a new Citizens Forum (1942)

The Citizens Forum, a radio program founded jointly by the Canadian Association for Adult Education, Canada’s Wartime Information Board, and the CBC, emerged in a time of crisis. Despite efforts to address social stratification in the interwar period, the Second World War underscored the extent to which the ideal of general Canadian welfare remained unfulfilled.

Big business, Canada’s foreign policy elite, and the mainstream press all had a say in Canada’s future—but what about the average citizen? For a new generation of

media reformers, the propaganda excesses of the First World War had revealed an urgent lesson: slogans weren’t enough. To win public support—and to build a more democratic, participatory Canada—government messaging needed to be matched by meaningful policy. Promises of public welfare had to be backed by real, measurable improvements in everyday life.

Figures like Frank Scott, leader of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (the precursor to today’s NDP), emerged in the 1930s as a vocal critic of Canada’s failure to protect the most vulnerable during the Great Depression. Scott and others condemned the way powerful economic actors used their monopolistic positions to offload the burdens of collapse onto those Canadians with the fewest resources.

This critique found theoretical backing in the 1933 manifesto Social Planning for Canada, drafted by the League for Social Reconstruction (widely read as one of the CCF’s founding documents). The manifesto argued that Canada needed a radical transformation in its social, economic, and educational structures—one where planning, rather than market forces, would guide the country’s future.

With the advent of war, Scott—along with allies like E.A. Corbett of the Canadian Association for Adult Education and David Petegorsky of the National Film Board—sought to integrate the principles of social planning into a broader project of participatory media.

At a joint conference at McGill University, they proposed a bold fusion of social planning with a new imaginary of public broadcasting.

Building on the legacy of the Farm Radio Forums (1940), an initiative led by Corbett and shaped by the rural socialism that gained momentum in Canada during the 1930s, the Citizen Forum would progress the concept of discussion-based broadcasts paired with study groups to address those governance issues most pertinent to the public.

Although the Citizens Forum was initially sustained through the advocacy of the CAAE, it would, in the postwar years, become integrated into the CBC’s core programming. Here, it’s important to remember that the creation of the CBC—a publicly owned corporation charged with advancing the public interest—ran in parallel to the development of the Farm Forums, emerging at a time when the concerns of Canada’s industrial heartland were central to the nation’s future.

Socially oriented media programs were, at least initially, met with hesitation by both Liberal and Conservative policy-makers. Fears ran deep that such initiatives might foster fellow travelers. However, following the electoral surge of the CCF between 1942 and 1944, these same programs were rapidly incorporated into the state apparatus, largely in step with efforts to contain the CCF.

A dual purpose for the CBC

In this context, the CBC served a dual purpose: it broadcast progressive imaginaries of the welfare state and it operated as a mechanism of containment.

Still, the idealisms crystallized by the exigencies of war continued to animate many of the media reformers who imagined a more participatory public sphere. It was within this complex climate—one marked by both state co-optation and grassroots pressure—that the Citizens Forum took shape. The program’s founders responded to these pressures by adopting a panel format that brought together studio audiences with a mix of subject-area experts and everyday participants.

Topics—voted on by the audience ahead of time and partially curated by program organizers—were structured around pressing national issues. A given broadcast might pose the following: should taxes on oil and gas be levied in the interest of all Canadians?

Roughly half of panel participants came from professional backgrounds—lawyers, professors, engineers—while the remaining voices were drawn from the public. Short study guides, distributed in advance, outlined the spectrum of positions on a topic, offering contrasting arguments from experts across ideological lines.

The result was a distinctive blend of public service broadcasting—part Power & Politics, part Cross Country Checkup, and part grassroots community forum. The advancement of the public interest was neither an echo chamber reflecting a weaponized ‘free speech’ nor was it an insular bureaucratic process—it fostered a non-paternalistic environment where public education mirrored governance itself, reflecting its workings back to those most engaged in the process of public policy.

While programming choices inevitably reflected tensions in political priorities, the deliberate effort to create a balanced forum—open to public scrutiny—ultimately fostered a more transparent model of democratic engagement.

Rather than situating public broadcasting as a wedge issue, policy-makers would do well to double down on the CBC’s own legacy: placing pluralism and public accountability at the heart of its programming structure. Reviving the Citizen Forum may not perfectly mirror today’s needs, but the challenge encapsulated by the forum—to reimagine the ambitious, messy, and experimental nature of public broadcasting in ways that synchronize with the equally experimental nature of democracy—remains remarkably prudent in an era marked by an accelerating crisis in public information. M

Anton Clark is a SSHRC-and FRQ-funded doctoral researcher at Concordia University’s Media History Research Centre, working under the supervision of Haidee Wasson. His dissertation traces the role of organized labour and moderate socialism in shaping Canadian cultural policy, focusing on adult education, wartime propaganda, and the political origins of the Massey Commission.

Wojtek Gwiazda

The case for a reimagined Radio Canada International

Imagine a service that anyone in the world can access for free. That not only provides accurate news about Canada but also world events and Canada’s reaction to them. That service is Radio Canada International (RCI). It has existed for 80 years. But lately its impact has been severely damaged by the lack of understanding at the CBC of what an international service is and should be.

So why have a public broadcast service conceived for people outside of Canada?

There’s the altruistic reason: In an age of misinformation, RCI is well placed to give accurate, honest, non-biased news and

information programming. Canada is seen as a country of good people, perhaps a bit timid about self promotion, but trustworthy.

There’s the self interest: Unless it’s a cold front, or a tariff war, there’s little information about Canada that consistently is accessible to people around the world, particularly without a paywall. And as any sociologist, economist, artist, politician, or business person will tell you, the first step to a successful relationship with someone is knowing something about them.

That’s why RCI needs a major restructuring to get back to its roots. Right at the centre, there has to be

a strong, professional newsroom of English and French journalists putting together regular timely newscasts and news copy clearly aimed at people outside of Canada. This would be the the foundation on which different language sections within RCI would build upon—not only translating, but adding the additional information needed for any specific country or region to which they provide programming. But RCI’s role should not be limited to news.

In the past, RCI featured programs about art, culture, and music, on Canada’s role in international politics, and on the economy.

In English and French, programs were conceived specifically for geographical areas, like Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas and the United States. RCI provided monthly music packs of Canadian music to be broadcast by hundreds of stations around the world. For decades, it promoted music from Canada by recording artists, and released records on the RCI label, and distributed these records worldwide. It produced radio programs to teach English and French on local radio stations in many countries, co-hosted by hosts speaking the local language. And it produced live federal election night coverage in English, French and other languages.

All of this, and more is not only possible, but absolutely necessary for Canada to take its rightful place on the international stage. And this can be done for a nominal cost. Before major budget cuts that began in the 1990s, RCI, with resources only a fraction of that of the BBC World Service, was close behind the BBC in popularity.

In terms of how to get this programming to people outside of Canada, we are extremely lucky, thanks to all the recent technological advances. In the past,

apart from shortwave broadcasts, RCI provided programming, first on vinyl records, then on cassettes, then on CDs. Now with the click of a button, newscasts, programs, and all the content produced by RCI can be sent via the Internet to any location for immediate broadcast, or streamed, or listened to on a podcast.

But we cannot only depend on the Internet and a website for RCI programming. Sharing our programming with broadcasters in other countries has worked in the past, and could be one alternative now. For countries where cooperation is difficult or impossible, RCI shortwave broadcasts can give access to news from Canada and the world to listeners who have limited access to outside uncensored news.

Any and all means of sharing RCI programming is possible and necessary because, with all due respect to Marshall McLuhan, in the case of Radio Canada International, the medium is not the message. The message is the message. What I mean by that is it is all about the programming content, content that is specifically designed for audiences outside of Canada who know little or nothing about Canada.

And to assure that this international mandate is respected, two things need to happen. Article 46(2) of the Broadcasting Act dealing with RCI has to clearly state the international mandate of RCI, the editorial independence of the service—not only from the government, but also from the CBC—by returning responsibility for the implementation and application of the RCI mandate to the RCI director. This, in fact, was the situation before budget issues with the CBC in the 1990s radically changed the independence of RCI to do its job.

This clear delineation of responsibility and independence is critical to the effectiveness of Radio Canada International. Obviously as a journalist, I would be against any government interference in the functioning of CBC or RCI. But at the same time, the CBC has obligations it must respect, among them is to provide a fully functioning, effective, and properly funded international service.

What that means is RCI needs to have a guaranteed budget that covers at least the basics: An English and French newsroom, English and French host-producers creating original programming for international audiences, language sections of host-producers in key foreign languages, technical and office personnel and resources, including an audience relations department.

CBC, Canada and the world need a reimagined Radio Canada International. RCI has survived for 80 years, it needs to be restored at this critical time in our society to play the important role it can and should play as Canada’s world service. M

Wojtek Gwiazda is the spokesperson of the RCI Action Committee. He was a hostproducer with the English section of Radio Canada International for 35 years and retired from the service in 2015. He is based in Montreal.

Gary Stevens CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Hennessy’s Index

Trish Hennessy

CBC’s

early days

“From its inception the CBC was intended to convey Canadian culture and to be an instrument of national unity. These objectives have been difficult to achieve given the popularity and proliferation of competing programs from the United States.”

1923

The Canadian National Railways developed a radio network with stations in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Moncton, and Vancouver. It was the original public broadcaster in Canada, but by the end of 1929, it only had three hours of programming a week.

1928

Prime Minister Mackenzie King appointed the Royal Commission on Radio Broadcasting—in part to address the flood of American news and

broadcast ownership in Canada. It was chaired by Sir John Aird, and is often referred to as the Aird Commission.

1929

The Aird Commission recommended the federal government create “a national broadcasting company with the status and duties of a public utility to develop a service capable of ‘fostering a national spirit and interpreting national citizenship.’” It also wanted to get rid of all private stations.

1932

The new Conservative government, led by R.B. Bennett, passed the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Act, establishing a publicly owned Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) with a mandate to provide programs and extend coverage across Canada. It took over the Canadian National Railways’ radio stations. Private radio stations were allowed to continue, and expand.

1936

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC/Radio-Canada) was created as a crown corporation on November 2, 1936 under a new Canadian Broadcasting Act. “The corporation assumed the assets, liabilities and

main functions of the CRBC. These included regulating the private stations and providing homegrown programming for all Canadians.”

1937

Only half of Canada’s population had access to CBC/Radio-Canada—most of them in cities, where there was competition from American stations.“ To fix this, 50-kW transmitters were built in Montreal and Toronto, increasing service to about 76 per cent of the population.

1939

The broadcaster added 50-kW transmitters in Saskatchewan and the Maritime provinces. They also began building low-power relay transmitters in B.C., northern Ontario, and New Brunswick. After the war, 50-kW stations were built in Manitoba and Alberta.

WWII

The CBC/Radio-Canada created an overseas service at the start of the Second World War. In 1941, the broadcaster ended its reliance on Canadian Press news bulletins and created its own news service.

1952

CBC’s first TV stations debuted in Montreal and

Toronto, broadcasting to 26 per cent of the population. By 1954, TV ownership was thriving and the CBC broadcast to 60 per cent of the population. At the time, Canada “ranked second in the world in the production of live TV programming.” Stations were set up in Ottawa, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Halifax. To fund its development, the federal government placed an excise tax on TV sets.

1957

English and French CBC TV networks broadcast up to 10 hours a day, reaching 85 per cent of the population.

68 per cent

Between 1967 and 1974, CBC TV grew its Canadian content from about 52 per cent to around 68 per cent, creating flagship programs such as Marketplace, The Beachcombers and The Fifth Estate. This was a response to criticism of American content on the public broadcast network.

1972

The CBC became the first broadcaster in the world to use a domestic satellite in geostationary orbit to broadcast a television signal. It was focused on northern communities from Whitehorse, Yukon to Goose Bay, Newfoundland.

Sources: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-broadcasting-corporation. Listening In: The First Decade of Canadian Broadcasting, 1922-1932, Mary Vipond.. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/ article/canadian-broadcasting-corporation. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-broadcasting-corporation. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-broadcasting-corporation. https:// www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-broadcasting-corporation. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-broadcasting-corporation. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ canadian-broadcasting-corporation. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-broadcasting-corporation. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-broadcasting-corporation. https://www. thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-broadcasting-corporation. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-broadcasting-corporation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anik_(satellite). https://www. thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-broadcasting-corporation.

Stuart Trew

Canada’s murky North American future

Mark Carney wisely didn’t promise Canadians a miracle before travelling to Washington in early May for a first official meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. It’s not clear the PM achieved much of anything during the short visit. Trump’s views on North American trade remain murky, as U.S. tariffs threaten thousands of jobs in Canada.

When asked by a reporter whether the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (called USMCA in America) “is dead,” Trump made a series of contradictory claims. In chronological order, they were:

• USMCA “was actually very effective, and it’s still very effective”

• People “haven’t followed it”

• It was “a transitional step a little bit”

• It “terminates very shortly”

• It “gets renegotiated very shortly”

• It “was a very positive step from NAFTA”

• It “was a transitional deal”

• We’re going to be “starting to possibly renegotiate that if it’s even necessary”

• “I don’t know that it’s necessary anymore”

• “It’s fine”

• “It’s there”

• “It’s good… a good deal for everybody”

• “USMCA is great for all countries”

• We will be negotiating “over the next year or so to adjust it or terminate it”

Trump concluded with this: “We’re going to work on some subtle changes. Maybe. I don’t even know if we’re going to be dealing with USMCA. We’re dealing more with concepts right now. Look, right now, we’re doing trade. We have trade.” Then he claimed his policy was to make it uneconomical to make cars or anything else in Canada and Mexico.

Hundreds of auto workers have been laid off as North American producers shift production lines to accommodate Trump’s desire to stop importing cars and trucks from Canada and Mexico. These workers have no idea when—or even if—Canada-U.S. trade relations will normalize and at what new baseline.

Given the uncertainty about the future of the North American trade deal—and relative clarity on Trump’s intention to destroy what’s left of Canada’s industrial base—Carney will need to expedite and strengthen the industrial policies he outlined during the federal election.

The “build” agenda from the Liberal platform focused on incentivizing private sector investment in new productive capacity (in renewable energy, manufacturing or AI, for example) through grants, loans, tax credits, and by removing “red tape.” It’s what Carney knows, what he proposed internationally to try to catalyze the world’s obscene levels of private wealth into climate infrastructure spending in the Global South.

This classically neoliberal strategy has utterly failed to move the needle on lowering greenhouse gas emissions, slowing fossil

fuel development or rolling out renewable energy in a sustainable and publicly supported way. It will be totally inadequate to the task of enhancing Canada’s “economic autonomy.”

We need to act faster and more assertively, with a greater role for the public sector in guiding economic development and transformation—including through a public stake in production. We need less catalyzing and more of what Carney has called “backward integration.”

Backward integration is a business term for the corporate strategy of acquiring (through mergers or acquisitions) the means to produce key inputs a company would once have purchased from upstream suppliers. For example, Tesla purchased Ontario batterymaker Hibar Systems in 2019 and has mused about purchasing mining companies supplying the raw materials for its batteries and vehicles.

Carney appears to have used the term loosely during the election campaign to describe a situation where more of the inputs for Canada’s manufacturing supply chains also originate in Canada: Canadian minerals for steel and aluminum production, Canadian steel and aluminum (and artificial intelligence) for Canadian automotive production, and so on.

But there’s only so much money you can throw at companies to encourage them to adjust their supply chains in this way. If it is not profitable, companies simply won’t do it. M

Stuart Trew is director of the CCPA’s Trade and Investment Project.

Jonathan Meikle and Elizabeth Comack

Mapping colonial harms

Social emergencies in Manitoba First Nations

Social emergencies relating to suicides, violence, drug misuse, community fires, and health care services have been declared in northern First Nations in Manitoba and, in some of these communities, multiple times. An emergency is “an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action.” But these social emergencies are not unforeseen. They’re predictable outcomes of colonialism.

In recent years, nine northern Manitoba First Nations, along with Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, Keewatinohk Innininiw Minoayawin, and Keewatin Tribal Council, have declared states of emergency to raise awareness and prompt a response from provincial and federal governments. Drawing on media reports, we mapped those declarations to reveal a troubling picture of the colonial conditions that underlie these social emergencies.

One example is Shamattawa First Nation, a remote community located 744 kilometres north of Winnipeg. In The Dispossessed: Life and Death in Native Canada, Geoffrey York devoted a chapter to the struggles Shamattawa was having in the 1980s with an epidemic of children sniffing gasoline. York showcased the colonial conditions that led to the problem, including dislocation and loss of culture. After the First Nation was moved to a new site in the 1940s, “Their traditional culture was virtually destroyed and replaced by a new culture of dependency, and they lost the ability to control their fate.”

The impacts on the well-being of Shamattawa residents continued. Deaths by suicide involving young

adults prompted calls for help on five occasions since 2002. While mental health workers were sent to the community, then MKO Grand Chief Sheila North Wilson maintained that much more was required.

“We need to provide opportunities and give them the same fighting chance to succeed in life as we do in urban areas for our youth there,” the Grand Chief said.

Shamattawa also declared states of emergency in 2016 and 2023 after fires destroyed community buildings. On both occasions, the community’s only fire truck was in Winnipeg for repairs. They’re not alone in experiencing inadequate fire protection. According to a 2011 federal government report, almost half of First Nations in Canada have little to no fire protection. Yet, fire incidence rates for First Nations are 2.4 times higher than the rest of Canada.

Nevertheless, determining where to target funds for fire protection became more difficult after 2010, when the federal government stopped keeping track of how many fires occur on First Nation reserves.

Manitoba First Nations are also not alone in declaring social emergencies. States of emergency have been called in First Nations across Canada. Many of these social emergencies have been prompted by a suicide crisis.

The suicide rate among Indigenous Peoples is three times higher than the rate among non-Indigenous people, according to Statistics Canada. But suicide rates vary among First Nations. Over 60 per cent of First Nations experienced no suicides between 2011 and 2016; 78 per cent of First

Nations in B.C. had a zero suicide rate.

Michael Chandler and Christopher Lalonde’s study of suicide rates in B.C. First Nations found similar results and linked their low rates of suicide to “cultural continuity.” In other words, “First Nations communities that succeed in taking steps to preserve their heritage culture and work to control their own destinies are dramatically more successful in insulating their youth against the risks of suicide.”

Social emergencies are a clear sign that the myriad harms generated by colonialism—impoverished living conditions, disconnection from Indigenous ways of being, the impacts of forced relocations, and intergenerational trauma—have reached a breaking point.

Importantly, northern Manitoba First Nations are asserting their rights and building the social, economic, and political power to foster well-being in their communities. That involves responding when social emergencies occur (Indigenous-led mobile crisis response and mental wellness teams) and addressing the longerterm goal of controlling their own destiny (health services, community economic development, child welfare).

Needless to say, provincial and federal governments—and all settlers—have a responsibility to ensure the success of this decolonizing process. M

Jonathan Meikle is a member of Norway House Cree Nation. Elizabeth Comack is a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Police Alternatives-Manitoba and a member of the Manitoba Research Alliance. Their full report is available at: https://www.policyalternatives. ca/news-research/mapping-colonial-harms/.

Peter Prontzos

“A

Change Is Gonna Come”

It would take 1.7 “Earths” to sustain current human consumption rate

Anybody paying attention to the climate crisis knows that we are in the early stages of a global catastrophe—one that will not only affect “our children and grandchildren” in some distant future, but is impacting all of us right now.

What is also clear is that the situation will continue to deteriorate because the things that we are doing to reduce the chances of avoiding— or at least mitigating—this disaster, are not remotely adequate to the dangers that we face.

The key indicator of the crisis is the continuing rise in global temperatures—in 2024, the average temperature was 1.6°C above

pre-industrial levels. The horrific wildfires that have occurred in Canada and Los Angeles, for example, are harbingers of even greater climate disasters to come.

According to Dr. John Millar (clinical professor emeritus, UBC, and former B.C. provincial health officer), disasters resulting from increasingly unsustainable amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will include (but will not be limited to):

“...more wildfires, heat domes, droughts, floods, storms, hurricanes, melting permafrost, glaciers and sea ice, rising sea levels, and loss of species and biodiversity are expected.”

In addition to the various costs of rising CO2 emissions, there are many other ways in which we are polluting and destroying the very nature on which all life depends. The costs of these disasters, which are essentially passed on to the population, are known to economists as “externalities” because the corporations creating them (such as industrial agriculture, clear-cutting forests, overfishing the oceans) do not have to pay for the damage they cause to our environmental and to people. Rather, these costs are “externalized” to people and the natural world.

And these problems will inevitably lead to other terrible crises.

Collage CCPA, original design Ed Hawkins, National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading

One of the most serious is the reduction of agricultural production, especially in poorer countries. Increasing hunger and death are inevitable, which will force tens of millions of desperate people to migrate from their uninhabitable homelands. Such displacement will lead to more wars and conflicts, both within and between countries.

And inequality continues to increase. According to Oxfam, between 2020 and 2024, the richest five people in the world “have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer.”

Growing inequality is a major part of the problem. As Nicolas Viens and Andrew Jorgenson pointed out in the Spring edition of the Monitor: “...income inequality— especially the share of income held by the top five and 10 percent of income earners—is a significant driver of carbon emissions across Canada.”

This problem is true for the global economy as well. Not surprisingly, it is the richest people who can afford to consume the most “stuff” and who also do the most environmentally costly activities—such as travelling in private jets and yachts and building huge mansions. Nevertheless, despite the growing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the corporate media (and the fossil fuel industry) have convinced much of the public that global CO2 emissions are actually being reduced, thanks to the increase in solar and wind technology, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other forms of “green” energy.

Unfortunately, the truth is just the opposite. William E. Rees, (School of Community and Regional Planning, Faculty of Applied Science, UBC), has pointed out that, in fact, “...globally the situation is worse, since demand for energy is increasing faster than renewables can be brought onstream so the difference is being made up with increasing fossil fuel use.”

Rees, a pioneer in the field of human ecology, is probably best known for creating the concept of the “ecological footprint”—an estimate of the biologically productive land and sea area needed to provide renewable resources that a given population consumes, as well as to absorb the waste that it generates.

At the current rate of resource demands, it would take 1.7 “Earths” to sustain human consumption. Such a dilemma is obviously unsustainable and is only getting worse. Rees emphasizes that, “The transition to renewable energy (globally especially) is not happening as fast as the demand for energy increases. The only sure way to reduce emissions and global eco crisis generally (overshoot) is greatly reduced consumption—simpler lifestyles and smaller populations.”

A critical part of our dilemma, then, is how do we significantly reduce ecological destruction and reduce global poverty?

A fundamental starting point is to understand that the primary driving force of the eco crisis is the

insatiable greed of industrial and financial capitalism. John McMurty (professor emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Guelph) explains in The Cancer Stage of Capitalism how the global economic system is based on profit above all else and, like cancer, will grow until it destroys itself and its host. (As pro-capitalist guru Milton Friedman explained, corporations have no objective other than to make as much money as possible for their shareholders).

Joel Bakan’s classic book and documentary, The Corporation, pioneered the concept that there are significant parallels between the behaviour of large corporations and that of psychopaths.

So, given the power of large corporations economically, politically, and ideologically, what can we do to curb their power before humanity passes the point of no return?

In general, we can keep in mind the words of Humphrey Bogart in, The Maltese Falcon: “It’s not always easy to know what to do.”

And the Greek physician Hippocrates stressed an approach that is as vital to social movements as it is to medicine: “First, do no harm.”

One implication of this maxim is that any solutions that we devise must prioritize the needs of the majority of people over that of the upper classes.

Second, we need to create mass democratic movements, which are essential if people are to roll back the ecological and technological forces that are perpetuating these problems. As Social Ecologist Murray Bookchin understood over half a century ago, there are no individual solutions when it comes to taking on the power of the ruling classes.

Erica Chenoweth (Harvard) has shown that, in the 20th century, an amazing 53 per cent of non-violent campaigns succeeded in their political goals. Every campaign that had active participation from at least 3.5 per cent of the population succeeded, and many succeeded with even less. Of course, almost every campaign had a majority of the population who supported—or at least did not oppose—them. The key factor, however, was having at least 3.5 per cent of the population who actively supported the movement, using a host of non-violent tactics, including public education, boycotts, marches, electoral campaigns, and so on.

And the goal of these movements? Rees explains that, “On a finite planet already in overshoot, it is not biophysically possible to raise the material standards of the poor to those of the rich sustainably—i.e. without destroying the ecosphere, undermining life support functions and precipitating the collapse of global society...”

Instead, “the world community should cooperate on redistribution, on devising methods to share the benefits of development more equitably.”

If not, “collapse is inevitable”. M

Peter Prontzos is faculty emeritus at Langara College in Vancouver, who taught Political Science for over 25 years.

YOUR CCPA

Get to know Peggy Nash

POSITION: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

YEARS WITH THE CCPA: <1

What drew you to the CCPA?

I have been a supporter of the CCPA for years. It’s a reliable source for progressive takes on most subjects. The CCPA researchers are national experts that can hold their own with anyone. I love that the CCPA punches so often into the mainstream media.

As a former member of parliament, you’ve been a policy-maker. What role, if any, did the CCPA have in influencing your work? As the former Official Opposition Finance Critic, if I was preparing to give a speech in the House to take on the finance minister, or debate at a parliamentary committee, the CCPA’s research and publications were always a go to source for a general approach or specific numbers. I could always cite them with confidence.

You’ve spent years negotiating for autoworkers’ rights at the bargaining table. What did you learn from that experience?

From my earliest days debating my family around the dinner table to master auto negotiations, I’ve learned that you’d better have strong augments with reliable facts to back them up. You can’t build support from your own bargaining committee, or persuade management, or government, if you don’t have sound arguments and strong facts. Trade issues have always been front and centre for the union, and the expertise of the CCPA was an essential resource. We always knew that we were on the same

side fighting for workers and the average person.

How did your family influence the path you’ve taken?

While my family held a mix of political views, they all believed in standing up for what they believed in and stepping up to help others. I grew up in a pretty close-knit neighborhood in Rexdale, a working class part of Toronto. Neighbours helped each other and they passed this tendency on to their kids. I like to think that my family helped me look beyond disagreements to build relationships with people. But I was always taught to take responsibility and stand up for myself.

What are you reading these days?

Mostly I’m reading the book I’m rushing to finish writing with my former union colleague Julie White about the history of womens’ struggles for equality in the auto

workers union. It’s called Women United, Stories of Women’s Struggles for Equality in the Canadian Auto Workers Union. The book is due out this fall. I consume a lot of news from Canada and around the world. I’m also reading Burnout, by Hannah Proctor, about how activists keep going when the odds seem overwhelming against them. I’m hoping for some advice about how to re-energize the left.

When you’re not at work, how do you decompress?

I live near High Park in Toronto, so long walks with my dog gets my mind in a calm place. I also like just chatting with neighbours. Most of all, I enjoy spending time with my family and friends. I’m lucky that I have a lot of people in my life. I also like chess, although I usually lose… And films. I love going to the movies.

What gives you hope?

Meeting young people who are passionate about making progressive change keeps me charged up. I co-instruct a course on women and politics at Toronto Metropolitan University. Those students are smart, funny, and energetic. I can’t be anything but hopeful when I’m with them. But we don’t have the luxury of pessimism. The status quo is just not good enough. If you want to make a difference you need to wake up every day thinking about how to build a better world. M

Meet Molly Denson

Mary Louise (Molly) Denson (née Glynn), Thunder Bay, Ontario

Former 24-year donor left CCPA a final donation in her will

The CCPA is grateful to Molly Denson’s investment in our work during her lifetime, and very touched by the significant final donation to the CCPA that she included in her will.

About our mother, Mary (Molly) Upon Molly’s passing, we, her children, were greatly pleased to discover she had named a number of charitable entities in her will for significant final donations, including the CCPA. She was a strong role model for us. We are all regular donors to charities and causes, and take an active interest in issues at the local, national and global level.

The CCPA was a natural choice for Molly’s support. She was a highly educated person, holding two Bachelor degrees and a Masters, and had a tremendous capacity to remember facts and past events. She appreciated the rigorous research and analytical approach embraced by the CCPA in solving the many problems faced by Canada and Canadians.

Our mother had a great love for Canada and a deep appreciation for the peace and prosperity, which has fostered our exceptional quality of life. Her allegiance had deep roots—she was a fifth generation Canadian, with ancestors in Québec and Manitoba. As a child, she lived in both the United States and Canada, and as an adult, she travelled widely. Seeing the world

made her aware of the many advantages Canada enjoys, and the need to safeguard them against erosion, whether through neglect, mismanagement or malfeasance. Molly also realized her own good fortune in enjoying good health and having access to opportunities that others did not enjoy. She supported many charities, from local fundraising drives to global organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund. While she was not known as a political firebrand, she was certainly not averse to making a picket sign with a clear and clever message and marching for causes that she felt strongly about. She also had the occasional articulate and concise letter published in the local paper. Her commitment to bettering the world that we live in was greatly admired by her friends and colleagues. An inherent sense of fairness was the foundation of Molly’s support

for causes dedicated to improving the well-being of the earth and its inhabitants. When Molly and husband Ray moved to Saskatchewan in 1957, it had the only socialist government in North America, a factor that weighed in their decision to move there after graduating from McGill. At the time, one of the public figures she admired, the Honourable Tommy Douglas, was premier of the province. As a founding member of the NDP and father of Medicare, his dedication to the cause of social justice through his public service resonated with Molly.

Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians is another public intellectual much admired by our mother, in particular for her advocacy on the issue of water sovereignty.

Molly would have been horrified at the developments in the U.S. The suggestion that Canada might one day cease to be a sovereign nation and become a state or protectorate would have spurred her to furious action. There is no doubt that she would like to see Canadians resist any aggressive overreach by our neighbours to the south, since she valued so highly all that makes us truly and distinctly Canadian.

Molly would have been confident that her donation would be put to constructive use by CCPA as we face the many uncertainties of life in the 21st century. M

A life insurance gift is a charitable donation that you can arrange now to help the CCPA in the future. Making a life insurance gift is not just for the wealthy or the elderly. It’s a legacy gift that makes a special impact. To ask about how you can leave a gift of life insurance to the CCPA, or to let us know you have already arranged it, please call or write Katie Loftus, Development Officer (National Office), at 613-563-1341 ext. 318 (toll free: 1-844-563-1341) or katie@policyalternatives.ca.

Marc Lee

Mark Carney’s Values

What his 2021 book reveals about the leader he might be

VALUES: BUILDING A BETTER WORLD FOR ALL MARK CARNEY

Penguin Random House Canada, 2022

It’s fair to say that Mark Carney’s 2021 book, Values: Building a Better World for All, was his early application to be prime minister. Values covers a wide swath of economic history and philosophy, and gives us some clues into what makes our new prime minister tick.

At the end of its 531 pages, Carney lays out a hopeful vision for Canada, albeit one lacking a sharper focus on details. We can only conclude he is a very competent centrist whose plans for Canada won’t depart much from the status quo. In the face of the second Trump administration, many will feel that’s enough, but one can’t help wanting more.

When I first read Values upon its release, I was a little disappointed. I was hoping for more of a memoir: an insider take on the 2008-09 financial crisis when Carney was governor of the Bank of Canada, or a behind-the-scenes look at the early days of COVID-19 pandemic, during which Carney was at the helm of the Bank of England. There

are a few tidbits of memoir in the book, but for the most part, Values is a book about economics, history and philosophy from someone who’s been at the highest echelons of the public and private sectors. So what are the big ideas in Values and what does this tell us about the type of leader he would be? Carney is a strong believer in markets but acknowledges they need to be regulated for there to be decent outcomes. In a contrast to the Milton Friedman-inspired free market views of his Conservative adversary, Pierre Poilievre, Carney comments, “unchecked market fundamentalism devours the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself.”

Values comes in three distinct parts: a historical and philosophical contemplation of the evolution of modern economies and monetary systems; a review of three modern crises (financial crisis, COVID19 and climate change); and, a proactive agenda spanning leadership and directions for a successful modern economy. Underpinning a successful modern economy, he cites seven essential values and beliefs: dynamism, resilience, sustainability, fairness, responsibility, solidarity and humility. We’ll circle back to these below.

What values?

As you might have guessed, Values is a play on the different social and economic meanings of the word value. The values we have as humans are embedded in our economic and political institutions, which should ultimately transcend the more pecuniary values of what we consume or purchase. Carney has an excellent discussion of how

early economists perceived economic value as objective—largely linked to the labour that went into making something—as opposed to the subjective value of modern economics, where worth is in the eye of the beholder, as determined by the cold logic of the marketplace.

A key distinction made by a number of contemporary economists is between value creation and value extraction. The latter represents activities that skim off the rest of the economy, as forms of unearned income (also called economic rents). Value extraction initially referred to the unearned income accruing to landlords or the value of natural resources as gifts of nature. In a modern economy, unearned income is more often related to state-sanctioned monopolies, including patents and copyrights, and the gatekeeper functions played by banks, ticketing companies and social media platforms.

Unfortunately, Carney only peeks behind the curtain of value extraction and unearned income before moving on. Perhaps because a deeper dive might hit too close to home, including Carney’s early years as a banker with Goldman Sachs. If you want a more thorough critique of value extraction and rent seeking, a better starting point would be Marianna Mazzucato’s The Value of Everything or Joseph Stiglitz’s The Price of Inequality. That’s a missed opportunity because a few chapters later, Carney opines on the corrosive impact of growing inequality. He cites evidence from the OECD and IMF to support a view that “relative equality is good for growth” and that “more equal societies are

more resilient…are more likely to invest for the many not the few” but fails to connect the dots back to the causes of inequality. Nonetheless, we are left with a lingering concern that the acquisitive values of a market society may undermine other core values like altruism, generosity, solidarity and civic spirit.

Three crises

The middle part of Values interrogates the three great crises of the past quarter-century: the 2008-09 financial crisis, the 2020-21 COVID-19 pandemic and the relentless slow burn of climate change. The book contains decent overviews of history and government responses but the analysis feels light when considering the ring-side seat Carney had.

On the financial crisis, Carney has more to say about an episode in 2007 than the full financial crisis itself that hit a year later. Carney was still at the Department of Finance when the Canadian market for asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) was about to seize up. ABCP is a form of financial innovation known as securitization, which in this case means taking the stream of interest payments from corporate bonds (commercial paper) and repackaging them into assets that can be sold to pension funds and other investment funds.

Carney helped broker a deal on ABCP between London, New York and Canadian banks to get through

the tight spot and avert a major crisis cascading through the financial markets. For the crisis we would have to wait a year, but those same fingerprints of financial innovation—the securitization of U.S. mortgages that bundled in the toxic assets of subprime mortgages—were all over the collapse and its spread to all corners of the world.

Carney became Bank of Canada governor in February 2008, but we don’t get any insight of how the Bank of Canada and Carney developed and implemented Canadian monetary policy when things fell apart that Fall. Instead, the narrative jumps to later efforts to elevate financial system stability through macroprudential regulation via the G20 and the Financial Stability Board—a club of elite central bankers and securities regulators. Thanks to these efforts, all is good, or so we’re told, but this is hardly reassuring as financial markets seem to leap from one bubble to the next.

Carney’s coverage of COVID-19 similarly lacks details about the unprecedented fiscal and monetary responses to the pandemic. The onset of economic shutdowns happened just as Carney was on his way out the door as Bank of England governor. It would have been fascinating reading to see how Carney and the Bank of England positioned themselves in the midst of such massive uncertainty. Instead, we get a diversion into the flaws of cost-benefit analysis

Reuters

and the misuse of indicators like statistical years of life that convert humans into dollars.

Carney speaks to rediscovered values like resilience and solidarity in the face of COVID-19, but it’s the impact of fiscal and monetary policies that matter most for economists. COVID-19 normalized quantitative easing, the purchase by central banks of financial assets held by chartered banks and institutional investors. This provided short-term liquidity in the form of increased reserves of base money held at the Bank of Canada and other central banks.

While this never comes up in the discussion in Values, it could be important in the future. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has been peddling a Friedman-esque monetarist argument that the federal government irresponsibly printed money during COVID-19, which he says caused the 2022-23 inflation experience. In contrast to Poilievre’s allegations, this inflation episode is now widely believed to have been the result of COVID-induced supply shortages and the spike in energy prices from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. All of which occurred after the publication of Carney’s book, so it will be interesting to watch former central banker Carney credibly destroy these arguments.

The final crisis, climate change, is one for which Carney was a vocal advocate as Bank of England governor, and in his time since then. Values takes a strong position in favour of carbon pricing and, later in the book, praises Canada’s approach. It’s an awkward reminder of how politics can undermine good policy, as Carney is now set to eliminate the consumer side of Canadian carbon pricing.

After leaving the Bank of England in 2020, Carney also strongly supported the creation of voluntary carbon offset markets, an interesting marriage of his personal concerns and his finance background. This effort never really got

off the ground due to the tendency of offset markets to generate vast amounts of fraudulent activity. Carney’s recent firm, Brookfield Asset Management, was known for buying companies in carbon-intensive areas ostensibly to decarbonize them.

What’s next for Canada?

In the book’s final section, Carney speaks more to broader conceptions of values-based leadership by governments and corporations, with an emphasis on transparency and disclosure through things like ESG reporting. In a similar vein, he prods excessive executive compensation without going so far as to call for higher top marginal tax rates or other measures that would compress the distribution, like stronger unions.

At the end, Carney returns to his bid for prime minister and compiles his accumulated wisdom towards a plan for “How Canada can Build Value for All.” Up to this point, Canada is not the main actor in Carney’s narrative, as he takes a more global perspective. Indeed, his Canadian story lacks an understanding of our deeper orientation towards staples resource exports or the specific interprovincial or regional challenges the country now faces.

Alas, there’s not too much tangible policy detail in the Canadian plan, more of a restatement of those seven values, but in ways that deviate from common understandings. Most of his policy prescriptions seem to be in the vein of better regulation of markets to improve their functioning, along with a positive outlook on technology and promises of a “fourth industrial revolution”.

For example, solidarity is not about the role of unions in supporting workers to get better wages and working conditions. Instead, it’s more of a vague appeal for education and training so that workers have the skills needed to thrive. Similarly, fairness

and responsibility are not about progressive taxation and ensuring a more just distribution of income, but an appeal for markets to work better through prudence and disclosure.

For Carney, the banker, resilience has more to do with identifying and preventing systemic risks to the financial system rather than ensuring our buildings and infrastructure can survive fires, droughts, floods and heat domes. Meanwhile, sustainability is about green investment opportunities shaped by a strategic direction set by governments through carbon pricing, regulation and financial disclosure. Ironically, Carney’s support for carbon pricing is among his strongest policy recommendations.

It’s not clear how Carney would come to grips with the massive inequalities in our society, the rapidly declining state of the climate, and the dark side of new technologies and their potential to displace mass amounts of workers. Nor does trade factor in, as the second Trump administration collapses the whole basis for Canadian trade with the United States, and the post-war global order, with the United States as hegemonic power, starting to crumble.

At the end of the day, Mark Carney’s values proposition is not enough to “build a better world for all.” You can take the boy out of Goldman Sachs but the imprint of Goldman Sachs lingers. Carney offers up a solid understanding of how we got here, and the complexities of building a modern mixed economy, but skirts over more fundamental economic challenges. As for Carney the politician, that chapter remains unwritten. M Marc Lee is a senior economist with the CCPA.

E.R. Zarevich

1940s Quebec from the perspective of a sharp-minded young woman

MONTREAL STANDARD

TIME: THE SELECTED JOURNALISM OF MAVIS GALLANT MAVIS GALLANT

EDITED

BY

NEIL BESNER AND MARTA DVORÁK AND BILL RICHARDSON PREFACE BY MARY K. MACLEOD

Véhicule Press, October 2024

It’s not an official part of my journalism course curriculum, but I made it so anyways. Last year in fall 2024, Véhicule Press published a selection of clippings from the now discontinued Quebec-based newspaper The Montreal Standard, pounded out on a typewriter by none other than the French-Canadian powerhouse Mavis Gallant (1922-2014). I found it necessary to procure a copy of this collection and position myself as Gallant’s student. Of course I want to learn from a writer who, in her lifetime, had more than a hundred pieces published in The New Yorker. A writer who inspired a segment of The French Dispatch, my favourite Wes Anderson film. She worked for a local news outlet

in the 1940s and I’m working for one right now. There is a lot I can take away from what she published. There are also a lot of qualities of her work that I can choose not to adopt.

Mavis Gallant’s time at The Montreal Standard was something of a double apprenticeship for her. It was at this paper she would hone the skills that would allow her to act, years later, as the on-the-scene correspondent for The New Yorker when the city of Paris was overtaken by chaotic student riots in the 1960s. It was also at the Standard that she would adopt the signature style of description that would make her fiction writing so precise and distinct.

While she was employed at The Montreal Standard, she was probably not aware of what she would accomplish further down the road. She was in her twenties, single, and trying to eke out a living in wartime Quebec. Despite the grit and competency she applied to the job, it’s likely she had her moments of

doubt. Who in highly conservative 1940s Quebec would be interested in the perspective of a young woman, however sharp-minded she may be?

Gallant wrote with cheeky wit and finesse

Gallant had only gotten the job at the paper in the first place because all of the men were off fighting overseas, and newsrooms were starting to take on skilled women as the only available labour. She knew this, and decided from her first article that she wasn’t going to let being a desperation hire impede her career growth. She worked closely with her main editor—this was Stanely Handman, the assignments editor—and he came to trust her, a woman with little life experience, to produce serious articles about challenging topics like crime, radio, literature, miners, war brides, immigrants, farming, and public health. He sent her to Jean-Paul Sartre’s conference when the world famous, controversial philosopher visited Quebec. That’s not an assignment for a rookie, that’s an assignment for an ace in the business. Clearly, Handman had solid confidence in Gallant and her natural talent. The educational value that aspiring journalists can draw from Gallant’s collection is paramount. Gallant approaches every topic she writes about with cheeky wit and finesse, and even at her tender age she had a description style that seemed to be training itself in preparation for writing short stories and novels that would go on to win prizes. Journalism was the wet stone for sharpening her pen. She was adept at cultural

commentary and could assess a community’s stance on any issue in a few short lines. In her article “Maria Chapdelaine,” published on January 13, 1945, she independently remarks on the Quebecoise rural community that was the inspiration for Louis Hémon’s famous novel Maria Chapdelaine, after travelling there herself to conduct research: “War, politics, anything not immediately connected with the business of earning a living from the very poor Lake St. John soil is scarcely considered. Its importance decreases with distance, and a crisis in Europe creates less furor than a frozen pump.” This kind of reporting takes acute observation skills and emotional intelligence. However, despite being impressed by the quality of Gallant’s prose, I’m a little more skeptical on the quality of some of her investigations. As I’m studying journalism right now, I cannot help but hold Gallant to the same standards that I’m being held to myself.

The world of journalism today esteems flawless honesty and the ability to divide news, opinions, and personal essays into separate categories. That being said, a few of Gallant’s articles draw some criticism from my end, and I wonder if perhaps they would have been better suited to a magazine rather than a newspaper like The Montreal Standard. Some of Gallant’s articles aren’t as steeped in absolute, irrefutable fact as they could have been. As many journalists do as some point or another, she occasionally wrote fluff pieces entirely devoid of traceable proof. These pieces come across more as thought experiments than news articles, and the fact that The Montreal Standard published them at all reflects the possibility that the editors at the time prioritized entertaining readers over providing them with knowledge.

One of the main perpetrators is Gallant’s “Meet Johnny,” a profile from September 2, 1944, on a city kid that is rich in characterization but deficient in data. The only real factual information we get is that Johnny is six years old. “A product of city living, he [Johnny] is cagey, acquisitive, very knowing. His chief burdens: women and discipline. Triumphs are in terms of nickel. Pretending indifference, pals watch him chewing candy, hope he will come across.”

I’m sorry to say this, but the piece reminds me of “Jimmy’s World,” the infamous 1980 Post article on a heroin-addicted child written by Janet Cooke that later turned out to be entirely fabricated. What Gallant wrote about her own unfortunate street urchin cannot be proven or disproven. And unless she deliberately wrote it as a lighthearted thought piece on the rough lives of streets kids in general, it doesn’t really strike me as proper reporting. It strikes me as excellent fiction thinly disguised in a news trench coat.

This book won’t appeal to everyone. There are many who will balk at the idea of reading news articles from nearly a full century ago, full of outdated information and obsolete ideas. We’re so saturated in fresh and technologically advanced news coverage now that a stack of past articles might come across as the literary equivalent of reading a textbook on shorthand. But for those who have an established interest in the history of journalism and in Gallant’s work, this book is mustread. This is the voice of a woman in discriminating times who approached her entire era with supreme confidence and prevailed in print. As my own studies continue, I will have Mavis Gallant to look to as an example of perseverance, and taking the opportunity to immerse yourself in ideas and subjects that may never have occurred to you before. Once a journalist has a platform, they have the means to try new things and learn. M

E.R. Zarevich is a journalist and cultural critic from Burlington, Ontario. Her work can be found regularly on Local News Burlington and Jstor Daily.

Photo by Alice Baumann-Rondez, Branching Out, February/March 1976, jstor.org/stable/community.28034460

Ricardo Tranjan

A manual for Ontario

AGAINST THE PEOPLE: HOW FORD NATION IS DISMANTLING ONTARIO

BRYAN EVANS AND CARLO FANELLI, CO-EDITORS

Fernwood Publishing, February 2025

Written in the summer of 2024, before the dramatic re-election of Donald Trump, the swift re-election of Doug Ford, and Mark Carney’s unexpected ascension to power, Against the People: How Ford National is Dismantling Ontario is probably more pertinent than its authors would have expected.

Compared to a year ago, the now three-time-elected Ontario premier is more popular in Ontario and across Canada. He is internationally known for his stances against Trump tariffs. And he has been photographed chatting over coffee with Canada’s new prime minister.

Doug Ford is not going anywhere.

We better learn more about the man, then. About his politics, which represent both a break and a continuity with previous Ontario Conservatives. While we’re at it, we might as well take a closer look at the political issues and policy areas that interest us and learn how the current government is fundamentally reshaping them. This book offers all of this, in one place.

The introduction presents readers with the conceptual, historical, and political contexts to forge ahead. Those new to Ontario politics will get a good bang for their buck—a lot is packed in those 12 pages, in a good way.

More travelled readers will appreciate the concise recapitulation and insightful comparisons, especially the notion that Ford

Nation is a contemporary form of the family compact.

Refreshingly, the authors avoid presenting Doug Ford as a Canadian version of an American or international trend, instead situating him as a made-in-Ontario phenomenon.

Prospective readers wary of signing up for an academic book have nothing to worry about. The introduction doesn’t try to situate the book within scholarly debates—phew! It also steers off lengthy paragraphs detailing what each chapter offers. The chapter titles are clear and provide an à la carte menu: pick the ones you want, save the others as a resource for another day.

There is a lot to choose from.

Chapter 2, “Manufacturing a Fiscal Crisis,” by Venai Raniga, discusses fiscal policies. It reminds us that Ontario is a rich province, and the economy has done mostly well in the past years. The current government is simply choosing not to tax and not to spend.

Chapters 3 to 11 dive into various program areas: arts and culture, education, post-secondary education, justice, health care, inequality, food insecurity, Indigenous land, and child care.

As someone regularly analyzing public education funding in Ontario, I couldn’t help reading Chris Chandler’s chapter, “Schools for Sale,” before the rest. The chapter does a great job of linking curriculum changes, especially this government’s fixation with financial literacy, with broader political goals, including privatization. It summarizes and connects various changes in education in recent years, arguing they are not arbitrary policy choices but a “concerted, six-year attack on public education.”

A second set of chapters—though not identified as such—shifts from specific program areas to cross-cutting concerns. For instance, William Paul’s “Ridding the Gravy Train” looks at scandals that made headlines in recent years, arguing that they are part of this government’s DNA, not merely a series of mishaps. Subsequent chapters address the current government’s consistent neglect of the environment, disregard for democratic institutions, interference with municipal affairs, and distinctly anti-tenant housing policies.

The final chapter reserves a treat: a political analysis by John Clarke—one of the most admired militants in Ontario and Canada. Clarke provides a thoughtful and down-to-earth comparison of resistance politics to Mike Harris Tories and Doug Ford Tories.

Yes, it is necessary to reignite the mobilization capacity of the Ontario Days of Action, briefly witnessed in the 2022 Ontario School Board Council of Unions stand-off. But Clarke argues that is not enough. Next time, workers and communities must be ready to escalate the struggle, moving from demonstration to action.

Except for this closing chapter, the volume does not focus on political action. Many chapters touch on or briefly explore the topic, but that won’t be enough for activists with ants in their pants. Yet, the book is unambiguous in tone and objective. It offers instrumental analyses of Ontario’s political economy and public policy, which are clearly meant not simply to further understanding of Ontario but to inform political efforts to change it. M

Ricardo Tranjan is a senior researcher with the CCPA.

Greg Marchildon

A polarizing figure in his lifetime, Tommy Douglas is now canonized

TOMMY DOUGLAS AND THE QUEST FOR MEDICARE IN CANADA GREGORY MARCHILDON

University of Toronto Press, 2025

After their death, most political leaders rapidly lose the prominence they enjoyed in their lifetime. Only a rare few grow posthumously in reputation and stature, especially within a constantly changing historical narrative.

Without a doubt, Tommy Douglas is among these rare politicians.

Almost two decades after his death in 1986, he was voted the greatest Canadian of all time in a popular poll conducted by the CBC. Tommy would not likely have received such acclaim in his lifetime.

During his career as a politician, as premier of Saskatchewan and as the leader of a national political party, his achievements were regularly challenged by those opposed to his policies and his values.

Those voting for him as the greatest Canadian likely thought of Medicare as Tommy’s greatest

accomplishment. In his lifetime, Tommy was as hated by Medicare’s adversaries as he was loved by its supporters. With death, old enemies (with some exceptions, of course) began to better appreciate this one achievement, a policy that perhaps, with the passage of time, seemed less threatening to their assumptions, beliefs, policies, and interests.

Without doubt, there were many underlying forces and key individuals that ultimately produced Medicare in Canada. However, when all the historical evidence is sifted, Tommy still emerges as the single most important individual among the cast of characters who had a role in the introduction of Medicare.

This is not to say that Medicare would never have been introduced in Canada in the absence of Tommy. Some form of public health insurance would surely have been enacted. Yet, without Douglas, Medicare would never have been implemented as early as it was.

Nor would it have taken the form it ultimately assumed. Douglas, more than any other individual or social force, is responsible for the single-payer and single-tier universality that became essential and entrenched attributes of Canadian Medicare as it evolved from 1946 until the passage of the Canada Health Act in 1984.

There can be little question of Tommy’s crucial role in the advent and shaping of the first phase— universal hospital coverage. He oversaw its timing, design, and implementation from the day he was elected premier of Saskatchewan in 1944.

He was the principal champion for its national adoption over a decade later. As for the second phase—universal medical care coverage—the credit is more distributed, but Tommy nonetheless played a leading role.

If Douglas had never existed and if the CCF had never gained office in Saskatchewan in 1944 and stayed in government for five successive terms, the result for medical insurance would more likely have been targeted, rather than universal, coverage.

Tommy Douglas might not have wanted to become a monument, but he is

Consistent with the demands of organized medicine and business interests, private health insurance would have remained (and perhaps would continue to remain) the predominant form of coverage for most Canadians.

While various provincial governments—perhaps with fiscal assistance from Ottawa—would strive to fill the gaps in coverage so that poorer and more marginalized

Canadians would have access to some form of needed health care, the result would still reflect a two-tier system, one for those with the capacity to pay and another for those without the means to access high-quality private care.

As for those in Canada who have remained resolutely opposed to this form of Medicare, Tommy is singularly responsible for what they see as its faulty foundation. In their view, Douglas’s model of single-payer and single-tier universal health care, as enshrined in the Canada Health Act, lies at the heart of the poor performance of Canada’s health system relative to other comparable countries.

In contrast, most Medicare supporters see the shortcomings as resulting from the more recent changes (or lack of changes) associated with the governance, funding, and delivery of Medicare services rather than the principles of the Canada Health Act. In other words, these problems in no way diminish the values of universality and single-tier delivery that Douglas fiercely advocated in his lifetime.

And much to the consternation of the critics of Medicare, these principles remain important to Canadians and are values worth defending.

In the last years of his life, Tommy advocated for the protection, extension, and improvement of Medicare outside the chambers of government. While his influence was limited during these final years, after death, his words and actions during his lifetime actually grew with time, his name often evoked to defend the principles of universality and public administration, as well as to enlarge and improve Medicare—to live up to his original objective of providing comprehensive health services to all Canadians.

His continuing posthumous reputation as the originator of Canadian Medicare is deserved, given the ferocity of his effort, his consistent focus, and his gritty tenacity he exhibited over a half century in establishing what he often referred to as merely the first phase of Medicare.

His doggedness reflected a rare constitution, one that had no qualm about sacrificing his personal popularity in the cause of ensuring access to the benefits of modern medicine for all.

At the same time, he inspired members of his government, ministers and civil servants to persevere and overcome the formidable challenges to implementing universal coverage—two times. The first time was for hospital services, a program implemented a full year-and-a-half before the National Health Service began operating in the United Kingdom. The second time, Tommy went ahead, despite the resolute opposition of organized medicine and a potent anti-Medicare coalition of the business elite, the mainstream media in the province, and political leaders outside of Saskatchewan.

Tommy may not have wanted to become a monument, but he has become one, and the engraving on the monument is invariably “Tommy Douglas: The Father of Medicare.”

And, in death, he became acceptable to the Canadian establishment in a way he never was in life, in part because the movement and ideas he represented has become such an accepted feature of the Canadian social landscape.

As Jonathan Eig points out in his recent biography of Martin Luther King Jr., the process of “canonizing” such historical figures also can defang them. Their “complicated politics and philosophy” become so simple as to be acceptable to almost everyone.

We should remember how polarizing and how divisive Douglas was in his lifetime. Motivated by principle, he had the courage and tenacity to try to change the way things were. But Tommy also possessed an innate pragmatism. He knew what he needed to do within a democracy to convince the public of the need to change. He knew how to find and work with talented individuals to figure out the concrete steps required to transform a set of laudable policy objectives into an effective and sustainable program. M

Gregory P. Marchildon is a professor emeritus at the Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation at the University of Toronto and the founding director of the North American Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.

Photo Duncan Cameron, Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, C-036222

The good news page

Compiled by Elaine Hughes

Indonesia showcases returned artifacts from the Netherlands

Centuries-old stone Buddha statues and precious jewelleries repatriated by the Dutch government to its former colony are on display at Indonesia’s National Museum, providing a glimpse into the country’s rich heritage that the government had struggled to retrieve. The collection is part of more than 800 artifacts that were returned under a Repatriation Agreement signed in 2022 between Indonesia and the Netherlands. The objects are not just those looted in conflict but also seized by scientists and missionaries or smuggled by mercenaries during the four centuries of colonial rule. / The Associated Press, January 24, 2025.

All Chicago municipal buildings powered by 100% renewable energy

All 411 buildings owned and operated by the City of Chicago are now officially powered by 100 per cent renewable

energy—approximately 700,000 megawatt hours of electricity—including O’Hare International Airport, Harold Washington Library, 98 fire stations, and two of the world’s largest water treatment facilities. This transition to renewable energy is anticipated to cut Chicago’s carbon emissions by 290,000 metric tonnes per year— the equivalent of removing 62,000 cars from the road.

/ My Modern Met, January 22, 2025.

International Day of Zero Waste

The theme of this year’s International Day of Zero Waste emphasizes the need for action in the fashion and textile sector to reduce waste and advance circular solutions. Consumers can significantly reduce environmental harm by adopting practices like reuse, repair, and recycling. Shifting away from fast fashion and investing in durable, high-quality clothing conserves resources and honors traditional sustainability approaches. / UN.org, March 30, 2025.

Storrington named UK’s first European stork village

Once, the Saxons knew the West Sussex village of Storrington as Estorchestone, the ‘abode of the storks’. But 600 years ago, the graceful white birds became extinct in Britain. Now Storrington and the nearby Knepp estate have been

designated a ‘European stork village’. This year, a webcam is also following one of the 15 nests already recorded this breeding season, which is set to be another record-breaker.

/ The Guardian, March 18, 2025.

Seven

quiet breakthroughs for climate and nature

Global temperatures rose and extreme weather ramped up, but there were also some significant breakthroughs for the climate in 2024. The UK closed its last coal-fired power plant in 2024. In the U.S., wind energy generation hit a record in April, exceeding coal-fired generation. The world over, rivers, mountains, waves and whales were given legal personhood. The North Atlantic saw a new marine protected area announced by the Azores. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped to a nine-year low, falling by more than 30 per cent. A major review of conservation initiatives this year found that they are often effective at slowing or reversing biodiversity loss. In California, wildlife has benefitted from decades-long drives by the Native American Yurok Tribe to replenish animals on tribal territories. / BBC NEWS, December 16, 2024.

Chimps share 98.7% of our DNA

World-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall has spent the last 40 years

of her life travelling the world, sharing her experiences with chimpanzees in an effort to save them from extinction. ‘’It’s really, really important as we move forward, that people begin to understand that we are not the only thinking, feeling beings on the planet, and because chimpanzees, logically, are so like us, we share 98.7 per cent of our DNA with them, it became obvious that we’re part of—and not separate from—the amazing animal kingdom,” says Goodall. / Iowa Public Radio, March 30, 2025.

Use of pesticides on UK farms to be cut by 10% to protect bees

Under government plans to protect bees and other pollinators, the use of pesticides on UK farms will be reduced by 10 per cent by 2030. The EU’s target for pesticide reduction is more ambitious: it aims to reduce the use and risk of chemical pesticides, as well as the use of more hazardous pesticides, by 50 per cent by 2030. Farmers have welcomed the plan and asked for government support in creating habitats for the predatory insects that feed on pests. / The Guardian, March 22, 2025.

“I worry about future generations... what they’re facing in terms of the new world today— misinformation, disinformation. Kids are growing up in a complex world in terms of defining who and what they are—what society they belong to.”

—Marie-Phillippe Bouchard, CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada