Business
Journalists should not be paid by the government
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Author: Kris Sims
Trust in journalism is crumbling while government funding of the media ramps up.
The Trudeau government is currently in a spat with tech giants Google and Facebook which could cost taxpayers big money.
Bill C-18 is forcing internet companies to pay media corporations when links to news stories are posted. In retaliation, the companies are vowing to block news links from their services.
The brass from media companies say if their news links are banned, they will lose out on millions of dollars.
What happens if Big Tech refuses to pay?
This Trudeau government is eager to have a place in the newsrooms of the nation.
“We have to make sure that newsrooms are open, that (journalists) are able to do their job and (they) have the resources necessary,” Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez told reporters.
In government speak “resources” means taxpayers’ money.
It’s time to set out a fundamental truth: having the government sign the paycheques of journalists who are supposed to impartially cover that very same government is a massive conflict of interest.
Columnist Andrew Coyne penned it well back in 2019 when the so-called media bailout was first being hatched:
“Taking money from the people we cover will place us in a permanent and inescapable conflict of interest; that it will produce newspapers concerned less with appealing to readers than to grantsmen.”
Fast forward four years and those media bailout deals are coming up for renewal, with the funding set to run out at the end of the fiscal year.
According to the heritage minister wielding the taxpayer piggybank, it sounds like more government-funded media is on the way.
That’s the last thing we need.
The CBC already gets more than $1.2 billion in taxpayers’ money every year and the feds budgeted $595 million for the media bailout over the past four years.
This means taxpayers have poured about $5.3 billion into the CBC and private-sector newsrooms over the last four years.
That kind of money would buy a year’s worth of groceries for about 350,000 families. It could cover the annual income tax bill of more than 380,000 people – about the population of London, Ontario. It could buy about 7,400 homes.
This government-funded media scheme isn’t just a waste of money, and it’s not just a conflict of interest – it also isn’t supported by Canadians.
More than 59 per cent of Canadians surveyed said the government should not fund newsrooms “because it compromises journalistic independence.”
That “journalistic independence” is an endangered species.
A Trudeau government committee is deciding what a journalist is, what a qualified newsroom is and the government is paying journalists.
The term “free press” doesn’t mean newspapers were free to take off a newsstand. It means the press is free from government influence and censorship.
Journalists should not be paid by the government. Newsrooms should rely on money from advertising, subscriptions and free-will donations from people who support them.
Under Trudeau’s bailout program newsroom employees get 25 per cent of their salaries covered by the government, up to a maximum of $13,750 per person.
Imagine being a journalist and knowing a big chunk of your paycheque is covered by the same government you are covering.
That’s like referees saying they can call the game fairly while also making bets.
Even the perception of corruption or bias erodes trust and a majority of Canadians have lost trust in journalists.
According to a longstanding survey that gauges trust, 61 per cent of Canadians think “journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”
Most Canadians now think journalists are trying to mislead them on purpose.
For journalists who believe their craft is a calling and that speaking truth to power is a nearly sacred task, that distrust is very tough to hear.
But we must listen. We can’t afford not to.
Kris Sims is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and a former longtime member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
Business
Premiers fight to lower gas taxes as Trudeau hikes pump costs
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
By Jay Goldberg
Thirty-nine hundred dollars – that’s how much the typical two-car Ontario family is spending on gas taxes at the pump this year.
You read that right. That’s not the overall fuel bill. That’s just taxes.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau keeps increasing your gas bill, while Premier Doug Ford is lowering it.
Ford’s latest gas tax cut extension is music to taxpayers’ ears. Ford’s 6.4 cent per litre gas tax cut, temporarily introduced in July 2022, is here to stay until at least next June.
Because of the cut, a two-car family has saved more than $1,000 so far. And that’s welcome news for Ontario taxpayers, because Trudeau is planning yet another carbon tax hike next April.
Trudeau has raised the overall tax burden at the pumps every April for the past five years. Next spring, he plans to raise gas taxes by another three cents per litre, bringing the overall gas tax burden for Ontarians to almost 60 cents per litre.
While Trudeau keeps hiking costs for taxpayers at the pumps, premiers of all stripes have been stepping up to the plate to blunt the impact of his punitive carbon tax.
Obviously, Ford has stepped up to the plate and has lowered gas taxes. But he’s not alone.
In Manitoba, NDP Premier Wab Kinew fully suspended the province’s 14 cent per litre gas tax for a year. And in Newfoundland, Liberal Premier Andrew Furey cut the gas tax by 8.05 cents per litre for nearly two-and-a-half years.
It’s a tale of two approaches: the Trudeau government keeps making life more expensive at the pumps, while premiers of all stripes are fighting to get costs down.
Families still have to get to work, get the kids to school and make it to hockey practice. And they can’t afford increasingly high gas taxes. Common sense premiers seem to get it, while Ottawa has its head in the clouds.
When Ford announced his gas tax cut extension, he took aim at the Liberal carbon tax mandated by the Trudeau government in Ottawa.
Ford noted the carbon tax is set to rise to 20.9 cents per litre next April, “bumping up the cost of everything once again and it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
“Our government will always fight against it,” Ford said.
But there’s some good news for taxpayers: reprieve may be on the horizon.
Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s promises to axe the carbon tax as soon as he takes office.
With a federal election scheduled for next fall, the federal carbon tax’s days may very well be numbered.
Scrapping the carbon tax would make a huge difference in the lives of everyday Canadians.
Right now, the carbon tax costs 17.6 cents per litre. For a family filling up two cars once a week, that’s nearly $24 a week in carbon taxes at the pump.
Scrapping the carbon tax could save families more than $1,200 a year at the pumps. Plus, there would be savings on the cost of home heating, food, and virtually everything else.
While the Trudeau government likes to argue that the carbon tax rebates make up for all these additional costs, the Parliamentary Budget Officer says it’s not so.
The PBO has shown that the typical Ontario family will lose nearly $400 this year due to the carbon tax, even after the rebates.
That’s why premiers like Ford, Kinew and Furey have stepped up to the plate.
Canadians pay far too much at the pumps in taxes. While Trudeau hikes the carbon tax year after year, provincial leaders like Ford are keeping costs down and delivering meaningful relief for struggling families.
Agriculture
Sweeping ‘pandemic prevention’ bill would give Trudeau government ability to regulate meat production
From LifeSiteNews
Bill C-293, ‘An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness,’ gives sweeping powers to the federal government in the event of a crisis, including the ability to regulate meat production.
The Trudeau Liberals’ “pandemic prevention and preparedness” bill is set to become law despite concerns raised by Conservative senators that the sweeping powers it gives government, particularly over agriculture, have many concerned.
Bill C-293, or “An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness,” is soon to pass its second reading in the Senate, which all but guarantees it will become law. Last Tuesday in the Senate, Conservative senators’ calls for caution on the bill seemed to fall on deaf ears.
“Being from Saskatchewan I have heard from many farmers who are very concerned about this bill. Now we hear quite a short second reading speech that doesn’t really address some of those major concerns they have about the promotion of alternative proteins and about the phase-out, as Senator Plett was saying, of some of their very livelihoods,” said Conservative Senator Denise Batters during debate of the bill.
Batters asked one of the bill’s proponents, Senator Marie-Françoise Mégie, how they will “alleviate those concerns for them other than telling them that they can come to committee, perhaps — if the committee invites them — and have their say there so that they don’t have to worry about their livelihoods being threatened?”
In response, Mégie replied, “We have to invite the right witnesses and those who will speak about their industry, what they are doing and their concerns. Then we can find solutions with them, and we will do a thorough analysis of the issue. This was done intentionally, and I can provide all these details later. If I shared these details now, I would have to propose solutions myself and I do not have those solutions. I purposely did not present them.”
Bill C-293 was introduced to the House of Commons in the summer of 2022 by Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. The House later passed the bill in June of 2024 with support from the Liberals and NDP (New Democratic Party), with the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois opposing it.
Bill C-293 would amend the Department of Health Act to allow the minister of health to appoint a “National pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator from among the officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada to coordinate the activities under the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act.”
It would also, as reported by LifeSiteNews, allow the government to mandate industry help it in procuring products relevant to “pandemic preparedness, including vaccines, testing equipment and personal protective equipment, and the measures that the Minister of Industry intends to take to address any supply chain gaps identified.”
A close look at this bill shows that, if it becomes law, it would allow the government via officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada, after consulting the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and of Industry and provincial governments, to “regulate commercial activities that can contribute to pandemic risk, including industrial animal agriculture.”
Text from the bill also states that the government would be able to “promote commercial activities that can help reduce pandemic risk,” which includes the “production of alternative proteins, and phase out commercial activities that disproportionately contribute to pandemic risk, including activities that involve high-risk species.”
The bill has been blasted by the Alberta government, who warned that it could “mandate the consumption of vegetable proteins by Canadians” as well as allow the “the federal government to tell Canadians what they can eat.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews, the Trudeau government has funded companies that produce food made from bugs. The World Economic Forum, a globalist group with links to the Trudeau government, has as part of its Great Reset agenda the promotion of “alternative” proteins such as insects to replace or minimize the consumption of beef, pork, and other meats that they say have high “carbon” footprints.
Trudeau’s current environmental goals are in lockstep with the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” and include phasing out coal-fired power plants, reducing fertilizer usage, and curbing natural gas use over the coming decades, as well as curbing red meat and dairy consumption.
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