Some days, I sit back at my desk and remember how much I love my job. Every day, I work with a great team of reporters, columnists, editors, and operations staff who share our mission of being the ‘Independent Voice of the New West’. At six years old, with bureaus in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Regina, we are no longer the plucky little upstart working from my dinner table. We truly have become that independent voice of the New West that the original Western Standard was dedicated to becoming when it was founded as a print magazine successor to the Alberta Report in 2003. In Alberta, the Western Standard has become the must-read publication for anyone wanting to understand her politics. Much of the time, the legacy media are days or weeks late to stories we break first. They are surprised when things like the Freedom Convoy, the UCP revolt against former premier Jason Kenney or the independence movement break out because there aren’t many people in their circles who would do anything like that. On the West Coast, BC Bureau Chief Jarryd Jäger has done a hell of a job in building our beachhead. The Western Standard has become the publication of choice for anyone who wants to know what is going on within the conservative movement and the Conservative Party in BC. Saskatchewan Bureau Chief Chris Oldcorn has built the Western Standard into a trusted brand there, able to work with people on all sides of the political divide to deliver hard, credible news. We are growing and have plans to hire more reporters soon, including on Parliament Hill. But we’ve had some challenges. Our unchecked growth came to a screeching halt in September of 2023 when the federal Liberal government enacted the Online News Act. That legislation caused Facebook to ban all Canadian-based media from its platform. It hurt the legacy media, but most badly damaged independents like the Western Standard, which disproportionately relied upon it for traffic. Overnight, we lost the source of half of our readership from federal legislation. For over a year, we painstakingly had to build new sources of readership to make up for Ottawa’s attempt to “help” us. To put it bluntly, it cost us a lot of money. Money that was already scarce, as we — a upstart independent publication — had to pay business taxes to subsidize our multi-billion-dollar corporate legacy media competitors. Since the re-founding of the Western Standard in October 2019, we have opposed the federal media subsidies. They represent an unacceptable intrusion of the state into the affairs of the press. When Trudeau introduced the subsidies in 2019, he promised that they would be “temporary” and only to help the media transition through a difficult time for the industry. But as we all know, there is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program. The Liberals renewed and enriched the program in 2024, and upon taking office, new Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to continue it. During the election, Pierre Poilievre backed away from his earlier pledge to end the media subsidies and instead “depoliticized” the programs to allow more independent and conservative outlets to participate. And then, the Liberals were re-elected. It seems now that there is no hope whatever that the federal media subsidies will be abolished. The Western Standard has been willing to decline the subsidies at a very significant cost to ourselves if there was even a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Now, even that small hope is gone. The media subsidies are here to stay for the foreseeable future. As publisher of the Western Standard, I am responsible for many reporters, editors, columnists, and support staff. We simply cannot remain competitive in the long term if the business taxes we pay are syphoned off to subsidize multi-billion-dollar competitors. To retain our best staff and recruit top-level talent with salaries competitive with the legacy media, we simply cannot remain at a structural 35% disadvantage. We were willing to damn the torpedoes and suffer the financial consequences so long as there was any hope that in the end, those subsidies would be ended. That lonely fight is now lost. For the Western Standard to remain competitive and continue to grow, we simply have no choice. This will be disappointing to some of our readers and members. It is to me. If this decision causes you to unsubscribe, I will understand. I have been willing to die on a hill of principle in my career if I feel it could serve some greater good. But letting the Western Standard wither away would serve the interests of only our legacy media competitors and the federal government. Put plainly, this is not the hill to die on. So, here’s what we’re going to do with the money. We will invest most of it into growing our individual membership base. The larger our base of paying members, the better positioned we will be to walk away from the subsidies if the federal government attempts to meddle in our editorial work. More paying members means more money to invest in editorial resources like reporters and columnists, which is where we will also invest much of this money. The program is set up so that the federal government subsidizes a portion of the salaries of editorial staff, which has made us uncompetitive with those already taking it. By taking it, we will be able to pay our top performers more competitively and hire the best in the business. Our internal business plans for the last three years have all assumed that the subsidies would likely be axed by 2025 and that we could bulldoze through it to the other side. We’re on the other side now, and the accursed subsidies are still here. We have to live in the reality of the world that is Canada’s cartel economy. But unlike our legacy media competitors — who lobbied for the introduction and enrichment of the subsidies — we will never abandon our opposition to them. We will continue to write about their destructive and anti-freedom nature and effects. When Parliament reviews the issue, we will demand their abolition at every turn. We will put the heat back on Pierre Poilievre to return to his earlier, more principled position of total abolition, not reform. We could have kept this a secret because the media subsidies are structured under the CRA’s tax program, and — like your own tax personal filings — are therefore confidential. But that didn’t sit right with me and my senior staff. We owe you — our readers and members — transparency and the truth, and so we’ve given it. One day, the subsidies may be abolished, and the free press will be stronger and freer for it. But until that day comes, we will play the cards we are dealt. I hope you’ll stay with us as we do.
