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Trudeau’s Online News Act has crushed hundreds of local Canadian news outlets: study

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Trudeau’s Online News Act, framed as a way to support local media, has hurt small media outlets while giving massive payouts to legacy media, a study has found.

According to a new study, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Online News Act has successfully crushed local media outlets while mainstream media has remained relatively unaffected.  

According to an April study from the Media Ecosystem Observatory, Trudeau’s Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18, has caused a 84 percent drop in engagement for local Canadian outlets, as Big Tech company Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – has refused to publish links to Canadian news outlets on their platforms.  

“We lost 70 per cent of our audience when that happened,” Iain Burns, the managing editor of Now Media Group, which manages news posts for outlets serving smaller communities, revealed. He further explained that he experienced a 50 percent loss in revenue following the move. 

“We’re not the only ones. Many, many outlets are in this situation,” Burns added.

The Online News Act, passed by the Senate in June 2023, mandates that Big Tech companies pay to publish Canadian content on their platforms. While the legislation promised to support local media, it has seemingly accomplished the opposite.  

While Meta has blocked all news on its platforms, devastating small publishers, Google agreed to pay Canadian legacy media outlets $100 million to publish their content online. 

The study, a collaboration between the University of Toronto and McGill University, examined the 987 Facebook pages of Canadian news outlets, 183 personal pages of politicians, commentators and advocacy groups, and 589 political and local community groups.  

“The ban undoubtedly had a major impact on Canadian news,” the study found.  

“Local news outlets have been particularly affected by the ban: while large, national news outlets were less reliant on Facebook for visibility and able to recoup some of their Facebook engagement regardless, hundreds of local news outlets have left the platform entirely, effectively gutting the visibility of local news content,” it explained.   

However, LifeSiteNews has been relatively unaffected by the ban as viewership on its official Facebook page has remained relatively the same, similar to its Instagram account since most views already came from the United States.  

Similarly unaffected was Meta: “We find little evidence that Facebook usage has been impacted by the ban.”  

“After the ban took effect, the collapse of Canadian news content production and engagement on Facebook did not appear to substantially affect users themselves,” the study said.  

While local media outlets’ viewership has declined thanks to Trudeau’s new legislation, larger media outlets have thrived due to increased payouts from the Trudeau government.  

Legacy media journalists are projected to have roughly half of their salaries paid by the Liberal government after the $100 million Google agreement and the subsidies outlined in the Fall Economic Statement.  

Mainstream Canadian media had already received massive federal payouts, but they have nearly doubled after Trudeau announced increased subsidies for legacy media outlets ahead of the 2025 election. The subsidies are expected to cost taxpayers $129 million over the next five years.   

However, just as government payouts increase, Canadians’ trust in mainstream media has decreased. Recent polling found that only one-third of Canadians consider mainstream media trustworthy and balanced.   

Similarly, a recent study by Canada’s Public Health Agency revealed that less than a third of Canadians displayed “high trust” in the federal government, with “large media organizations” as well as celebrities getting even lower scores.  

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CBC retracts false claims about residential schools after accusing Rebel News of ‘misinformation’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

CBC has issued a correction after falsely accused Rebel News of spreading misinformation while itself promoting the false claim that remains of Indigenous children were found in unmarked graves at residential schools.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has issued a correction after blaming Rebel News of “misinformation” while spreading false information itself.

On April 17, CBC corrected a comment from chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton who accused Rebel News reporter Drea Humphrey of spreading “misinformation,” while repeating the false claim that bodies have been found in unmarked graves at Indigenous residential schools.

“Yes, there have been remains of Indigenous children found in various places across the country,” Barton falsely stated during a live broadcast following the French-language federal election leaders’ debate.

Her comment was in reference to New Democratic Leader (NDP) Jagmeet Singh refusing to answer a reporter’s question whether he would condemn the rash of church burnings and acts of vandalism across Canada.

“In this case you saw Mr. Singh, and this has been his position for some time, to refuse to answer questions,” Barton said during the live stream.

“Rebel News in particular traffics in misinformation, lack of facts, and as you heard in that question, which was woven with some truth and some things that weren’t true,” she claimed.

“Yes, there have been burnings of Christian, Catholic churches,” she admitted.

“Yes, there have been remains of Indigenous children found in various places around the country, which she misrepresented,” Barton falsely stated.

Despite mass excavations, there have still been no mass graves discovered at any residential schools across Canada, but politicians and media continue to promote the false narrative.

However, even in their correction statement, CBC failed to mention that, to date, no human remains have been discovered.

“As CBC News has reported on multiple occasions, what several Indigenous communities across Canada have discovered on the sites of some former residential schools are potential burial sites or unmarked graves,” the statement read.

However, CBC is now well known for pushing the false narrative that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the schools. As a consequence of that false narrative, since 2021, over 100 churches have been burned or vandalized across Canada in seeming retribution.

Indeed, in addition to perpetuating the “mass graves” narrative, media and politicians have even threatened to punish those who oppose it. In October 2024, CBC ran a story which suggested that “residential school denialism” should be criminalized.

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2025 Federal Election

No Matter The Winner – My Canada Is Gone

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Trish Wood is Critical

Trish Wood

This clip of Andrew Coyne represents journalistic malpractice but represents what many of our “elites” are thinking. They hate ordinary Canadians and populism. They have no clue what many voters are actually upset about.

I was awake part of the night thinking about how awful this election campaign is. And not just because I am terrified that Mark Carney will win. No — it feels like we’ve crossed a threshold and there is no turning back. Ten years of Trudeau’s division, his utilizing of the culture and woke wars to make us hate each other. Ten years of Conservatives either firing back and keeping the war going or pretending to go along to maintain popularity with a propagandized population. This is the definition of a sick society. As I said, I will vote Conservative but I’m not going to exhale after I do it.

There are virtually no sincere appeals to reuniting the country after the COVID-19 debacle, Freedom Convoy, or any of the other politicized events that encircle our tribes. I’ve told you many stories about this reality.

Dinner parties have become almost impossible to navigate with important topics off-limits. What’s left? Movies, streaming series and sports. In between bursts of conversation there are heavy silences between people who love each other but reside in different conversational realities. This is the fault of pols and media. Full stop.

This clip of Andrew Coyne represents journalistic malpractice but represents what many of our “elites” are thinking. They hate ordinary Canadians and populism. They have no clue what many voters are actually upset about. Carney himself said he was returning to Canada to “end populism.”

I just want my country back. Let me tell you a story.

In 1989, I was dispatched to Kuujjuaq, a tiny, freezing and somewhat desolate town in Northern Quebec. Scientists had just published a shocking study showing that Inuit mothers were testing positive for PCBs in their breast milk. How could this be in such a remote, non-industrialized village?

The Inuit mothers had been chosen as a pristine control group to study against PCB presence in mothers residing in Southern Quebec, near industry. The findings were completely unexpected and I was sent to report on them by the great James Cullingham, my boss at As It Happens.

I arrived at the tiny airport with my recording gear and was welcomed by the locals who set me up at a lodge. We couldn’t have been more different but I was treated kindly as someone who’d come from the CBC to help publicize their plight.

How did they become contaminated, way up there? It turns out PCBs travel in the blubber of animals that swim through polluted waters. Seal fat, which was a mainstay of the local diet is riddled with PCB’s dumped into the St. Lawrence hundreds of miles away.

Here is where it gets interesting — a day I will never forget. The local chiefs were meeting to choose a brand new word in Inuktitut to describe what they were dealing with. It seems the concept of PCB contamination was so foreign, they had to add to their lexicon to even discuss it and I was invited to attend.

I felt like an intruder from the rapacious south witnessing a tragedy that we’d inflicted on these sturdy, welcoming people. But they were gracious and open as they struggled to find a solution.

I left feeling grateful to be Canadian; to work at CBC and to have experienced the lives of others who shared this once-great land. I am nostalgic for a Canada, full of good will, even in times of tragedy — that no longer exists.

Meanwhile — the Liberal campaign and its supporters are reduced to looking for MAGA “dog whistles” at Poilievre events while at the same time being outed for “finding” MAGA buttons at a Conservative gathering in Ottawa.

Two Liberal Party staffers attended last week’s Canada Strong and Free Networking (CSFN) Conference where they planted buttons that used Trump-style language and highlighted division within the Conservative Party.

The conference, often referred to by its former name, the Manning Conference, is an opportunity for conservative-leaning Canadians to talk about policy proposals and network. It was held at the Westin Hotel in downtown Ottawa.

We aren’t talking about Big Things or Inspiring Things. Or what we share as a people. We have been deceived. Pitted against each other and fleeced of our natural affinity for other Canadians, no matter how different. Canadian voters are victims of a home invasion robbery — perpetrated by legacy media and our gutless political class who play along for what some of them wrongly believe are high-minded reasons.

In the meantime, Mark Carney is clearly fixing to ban X and other websites that threaten his temple of deceit. For this reason alone, he must not win. But we are all losers regardless of the outcome.

This is perhaps the scariest clip of the campaign. They have failed at everything. The economy, COVID-19, retaining a semblance of democracy….but they have successfully brought us to the brink of collapse and separation. And their solution is to not fix it, but prevent us from talking about it.

Stay critical.

Thanks #truthovertribe

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