The unexpected chill in relations with the USA, after President Trump’s calls for Canada to become the 51st state, helped Mark Carney’s Liberal party to win the 2025 federal election in April, also boosting ratings for news outlets such as CBC/Radio-Canada. The continued absence of news on Meta platforms stands in contrast to Google’s approach to news publishers, where funding is now starting to reach news outlets.

News media are affected in different ways by the tensions and tariffs that are dividing two long-time allies with strongly intertwined economies. Newsprint, for example, is largely a Canadian export to the south; ink is a US export to the north. But the situation has also led to heightened concerns about the quality of information spilling over from widely used American media, especially in a general election season. An inquiry on foreign interference in Canadian elections concluded that disinformation and misinformation, including AI-enabled manipulated content, were the ‘single biggest risk’ to democracy in the country.

Canadian users of Meta services such as Facebook and Instagram remain without professional news on the platforms, part of the company’s response to the country's Online News Act (formerly Bill C-18) after it refused to negotiate or pay news providers for their content. Google did pay – CAN$100m (US$73m) a year – and the resulting funds are now being distributed to a range of newspapers, broadcasters, and digital outlets. The public broadcaster CBC will be using its share of the money to hire journalists in regions with low news coverage.

Industry groups have called on advertisers to withdraw ads from tech platforms and support struggling local media instead, even though the federal government itself decided to reinstate its own advertising on Facebook and Instagram. The financial burdens imposed on platforms are among the many criticisms levelled at Canada by the Trump administration.

News media continue to benefit from public funding, including a new federal initiative for French minority-language community publications and radio stations. The Province of Ontario directed its largest advertising divisions to spend at least 25% of their ad budgets with local publishers. Uvagut TV, a channel with programming in the Inuktitut language, operated by a non-profit, will be added to basic cable packages. A partnership with CBC will provide news to the channel which previously was only available on the public broadcaster’s platforms. News magazine The Walrus, supported by the environmentalist Chawkers Foundation, is opening a network of six bureaus across the country.

The big media players meanwhile continue to try to find ways to compensate for the decline of legacy business models, competition from US media, and news fatigue. Some are trying flexible pricing to attract new subscribers: the Torstar newspaper chain, owner of the Toronto Star, became the first to launch a pay-as-you-go model for online news content, under which a single article costs 75 cents and daily payments are capped at CAN$1.50 for full access. The company said if someone has full access just once a week, they will be paying close to what an annual subscriber pays.¹

Postmedia, owners of the National Post and the Financial Post, teamed up with US content and marketing company Contend to develop film, TV, and short-form video projects from Canadian creators and producers. It also acquired the Saltwire network in Atlantic Canada and sold three newspapers in Manitoba. In Quebec, La Presse, whose financial model places great importance on donations, reported a surplus of CAN$7.5m for 2024.

News consumption on free ad-supported television (FAST) is growing and Pluto TV, a FAST distributor, added CBC and Radio-Canada news channels, in addition to international news channels, to its offerings. However, Global News, which operates mainly as a television network, cut 35 jobs in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario.

A joint lawsuit was launched against OpenAI by the country’s biggest news groups, including Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, the Canadian Press agency, and CBC. The suit is seeking punitive damages of US$14,300 per article they claim was used in the training of ChatGPT. ‘Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies’ journalism for their own commercial gain is not,’ the group said.

A local news publication at the border of Alberta and BC, the Crowsnest Pass Herald, is just one of more than 1,000 local newspapers claiming up to CAN$8bn in damages from Google and Meta for lost revenue. Owner Lisa Sygutek, who has been characterised as an Erin Brockovich-style character because of her determination to seek justice for fellow small media companies, stands to receive CAN$3m if the action succeeds.

Colette Brin and Sébastien Charlton
Director and Coordinator, Centre d’études sur les médias

Levels of trust in news overall haven’t changed much in the past few years, but are still around 20 points below the 2018 results. Individual brands, and especially legacy brands from Canada, continue to fare well, and even better among French speakers; most are trusted by a majority of their users, with less than 20% of mistrust.

Footnotes

¹ https://pressgazette.co.uk/paywalls/casual-payments-for-news/