This is a highly compromised and imperfect attempt to solve a very real problem. It's not exactly new information that journalism is in a tough spot right now.

This is a highly compromised and imperfect attempt to solve a very real problem. It's not exactly new information that journalism is in a tough spot right now. As subscriber revenue has dried up, national and multinational companies have bought up virtually all newspapers in Canada. Where there were once a plethora of independent newspapers, now there is just one or two national papers producing localized versions under different names all pretending to be local. Some major Canadian cities have newspapers with no physical offices. e.g. Calgary's "Calgary Herald" building was recently turned into a bus depot, and the few employees still working in the Post Media paper are now working from home. In it's heyday, the paper had a building downtown, and city councillors would stroll from city hall to the Herald's office when news was breaking. Now the work-from-home crew only produces localization for a national paper, and interacts with city hall on reddit more than they do in person. Not surprisingly, the quality of local coverage has declined massively. Journalism is a key part of democracy, informing the public and holding government accountable. The federal Liberals, currently in power, were correct to recognize this, but their actions have left a little to be desired. They implemented government subsidies for media with the intention of shoring up news media so that they can continue to function. This, obviously, produces a conflict of interest that the opposition has pointed out but. However, the problems with this program go even further. A few large media corporations with influential lobbyists now control the board that decides which news companies get funding, and they've used that power to freeze out upstart competition. Some of the best journalism being done in Canada right now is by upstart companies that get zero funding from the government, and will get none in the forseeable future. So, where is the money that Meta or Google are supposed to pay for news going to go? It's likely going to go the same place that current media subsidies go, and not to the independent news sources that really need it. This really is an awful implementation, but at least it's something. We can only hope that successive governments will iterate and improve rather than simply cancelling both subsidies and this new bill. The need for quality, local journalism is very real, and current funding models are badly broken.