Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are grappling with the prospect of subsidized media ending after the next election — and the new era of Canada’s free press. Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, who is on track to win a super majority in the next election, according to recent polls, has pledged to end all media subsidies. He also promised to defund the CBC, Canada’s state broadcaster, and turn its Toronto offices into housing. Liberal MP Ryan Turnbull cringes at the “scary thought.” “A Poilievre-led government would end subsidies to mainstream media and defund the CBC greatly diminishing the information economy in Canada and making us dependent on social media platforms owned by American billionaires for our news,” wrote Turnbull on social media Thursday night. Turnbull in his post included a clip from that evening’s Power & Politics panel on CBC where guests debated host David Cochrane on whether Poilievre would go through with his promise to end subsidized media and make way for free press. Cochrane expressed concern that should Poilievre win the next election and keep his promise of “defunding the CBC and ending media subsidies to the National Post, Toronto Star, Globe & Mail and all the others,” he will then have to renegotiate NAFTA in 2026 with President-elect Donald Trump “with no national public broadcaster and a diminished Canadian media, and social media platforms owned by American billionaires that are cozy with the president of the United States.”“What kind of a playing field does Canada walk into in its national interest in that situation?”
