On 16 October 2026, Michael Geist analysed the results of a Canadian Heritage consultation on the Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) and the Canada Periodical Fund (CPF). It was not posted on the department's public consultations page. It drew more than 260 written submissions and a dozen meetings with 61 stakeholders. The department itself acknowledged that the group is not a statistically representative sample of the media ecosystem. The asks were consistent: make the programs permanent and broader, fund them over several years, and keep the journalism labour tax credit at 35% instead of letting it fall to 25% next year. Respondents also asked to bring magazines under the Online News Act. LJI decisions are due before its March 2027 sunset.
This matters because the consultation treats the Online News Act as a settled instrument to be widened. The record suggests it should be consolidated into something simpler.
The strongest case for the current approach
The case for support is real. The department's Question Period note cites the Local News Research Project: 613 local media outlets have closed in 391 communities since 2008. The LJI, at $19.6 million a year, supported an average of 470 journalist hires a year from 2019-20 to 2023-24. Many of those are reporters in towns that would otherwise have none. The Online News Act, which received Royal Assent on 22 June 2023, rests on a coherent theory. Platforms capture value from news content, so a bargaining and arbitration framework should move some of that value back to publishers. The Act's text sets a 90-day bargaining period, then 120 days of mediation, then final-offer arbitration.
It has also produced money. In October 2024 the CRTC granted Google a five-year exemption on condition that it pay $100 million a year through the Canadian Journalism Collective. The government says that over 450 Canadian and Indigenous news businesses had received funding as of December 2025.
What the record shows
The same government note concedes the Act's central failure. Meta banned news content on its platforms in Canada in August 2023 and, in the department's own words, this avoids compliance with the Act and has continued to reduce Canadians' access to local news. The Act did not produce a negotiated market. It produced one payer, Google, that bought certainty through an exemption, and one platform that left. A mechanism designed to pay for links has cut off a source of audience for publishers, which is a poor result for a policy meant to strengthen news.
The Act's design also builds in the problem. Its definition of a "digital news intermediary" covers any online platform that makes news content available to people in Canada, including search engines and social media. Exposure to payment obligations therefore depends on whether a service shows news. That gives platforms a rational reason to show less of it. Extending coverage to magazines, as respondents asked, would widen the same exposure and invite the same response, while adding a new class of claimants to a pool that Google's payment already splits across hundreds of outlets.
The independence question the consultation skipped
Geist's sharper point concerns the structure of the money. Respondents mostly said current support is independent enough because they see no editorial interference. They worried more about closures and news deserts than about influence. Geist cautions that government funding can shape coverage of the funding itself, and can erode public trust, including by excluding critics of government policy.
Outlets have good reasons to value stable funds, and a closed newsroom is a real loss. But a free-press publication should be wary of a funding system in which beneficiaries lobby the department that sets eligibility rules, which is what this consultation looks like. The current stack is fragmented: the LJI, three CPF streams (Aid to Publishers at $70.3 million a year, Special Measures for Journalism, and Collective Initiatives), a tax credit scheduled to step down, registered journalism organization status, and now a platform levy. Each has its own eligibility rules and its own sunset. Each renewal is a negotiation with ministers.
A proportionate alternative
A better design would consolidate these streams into one fund. It would have statutory eligibility criteria, multi-year appropriations, and governance at arm's length from the minister, in the way the CRTC and the Canada Council operate. Google's $100 million would flow into it by agreement rather than through a bargaining regime that platforms can avoid by leaving. That would give publishers the multi-year predictability they asked for. It would also reduce the chance that any one department can reward friendly coverage or punish critical coverage.
Two practical tests should apply. First, eligibility should be content-neutral and based on verifiable newsroom employment, not on what outlets say. Second, any expansion, including magazines, should be justified by evidence of market failure rather than by the number of submissions. A consultation that was not publicly posted and drew from departmental contacts cannot supply that evidence.
The immediate decision is the LJI before March 2027. Renewing it for a few years is defensible as a bridge. Extending the Online News Act to more publishers, while Meta's ban stands and one platform funds the whole system, would repeat the mistake. The goal is for Canadians to have more local reporting, and the current framework has not delivered it.