And we’re seeing it in real time in Canada.
In August 2021, in an EconLog post about Canada, I wrote:
The government cannot subsidize newspapers without putting its thumb on the scale.
The post was titled “Canada’s Decline in Press Freedom.” In that article, I discussed the Canadian government’s newspaper funding program. I followed another letter in December 2021 where I quoted a funding critic, Peter Menzies, who quoted a critic named Tom Korski who put the problem succinctly: “You only need one customer and that’s [federal] The Minister of Heritage.”
According to him, Menzies has been following up on this matter. In a post on “The Line,” a Canadian substack that follows Canadian politics closely, Menzies quoted an MP who is part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government. Menzies wrote:
“Your paper wouldn’t be in business if it weren’t for funding from a government you hate – the same funding foreign hedge fund owners close to Trump are happy to pay your salary for,” he wrote.
“The one” who tweeted this was Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal MP for Vancouver Granville. He was replying to a post on X by “Terry Newman, The National Post the new editor of the comments section, promoting a column he wrote detailing the incredible damage ‘the party and ministers can do to the country in nine years.'”
Menzies wrote:
Nothing Noormohamed said was untrue. He and I are on good terms ideologically if it weren’t for Justin Trudeau’s government funding, Postmedia (and possibly The Toronto Star) would be over by now. Some of its titles may have been sold to certain segments, but most of its zombie productions would have long since been shipped with a brain-busting bullet, allowing new media to emerge from the rot.
In that regard, he was not wrong, although what he did was very inappropriate, even more so because Noormohamed is not just a naive Member of Parliament who builds numbers in a small Parliament. He is there Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of HeritagePascal St-Onge, in his office most of the decisions regarding the majority of Canadian media funding programs are made. (emphasis added)
Menzies’ Substack post was headlined: “Liberals Say the Quiet Part Out Loud.”
Press freedom in Canada is dying. And, as Noormohamed’s threatening tweet points out, silencing government critics is one of the main purposes of government funding.
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