Canada's experiment in making platforms pay for journalism is quietly mutating into something its architects rarely admit out loud: a direct transfer from the federal treasury to the country's largest vertically integrated telecom and broadcasting companies. The April 29, 2026 Spring Economic Update is the clearest signal yet that the platform link-tax model is not working as promised — and that Ottawa's answer is to layer a second, taxpayer-funded subsidy on top of it.
What changed on April 29
Buried in Chapter 2 of the Spring Economic Update, the government announced its intention "to seek the views of Canadians and stakeholders on extending the Canadian Journalism Labour Tax Credit to audio and audiovisual news production." In plain terms: a refundable credit that has so far been reserved for print and digital newsrooms would be opened to television and radio broadcasters.
The credit is generous. As tabulated by University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist, it covers 35 percent of eligible newsroom labour, up to $29,750 per employee. In 2024 it distributed roughly $71 million to support just over 3,000 journalists. Geist estimates that extending it to broadcast news would deliver a combined annual benefit of $50 million to $80 million to Bell, Corus and Rogers alone, with more flowing to Quebecor and a long tail of smaller players — potentially doubling the size of the program.
The same names, twice
The striking part is who collects. These are precisely the incumbents that already captured the lion's share of the link-tax regime they were told would save Canadian journalism.
The Online News Act (Bill C-18), which received royal assent on June 22, 2023, was built to force "digital news intermediaries" into mandatory bargaining with news businesses. Meta's response was to block news on Facebook and Instagram in Canada outright. Google negotiated an exemption in exchange for $100 million a year, indexed to inflation, paid into a collective and distributed largely by newsroom size — a formula the Reuters Institute documented as rewarding reporting hours rather than need.
The result was predictable. Among private broadcasters, Bell ranked first with $8.1 million, Corus took $5.4 million and Rogers $3.4 million. The largest single recipient overall was Postmedia at $4.2 million. So the institutions now positioned to benefit most from a fresh tax-credit expansion are the same ones that already topped the platform-funded payout. The Spring Economic Update does not correct that concentration — it deepens it, this time on the public dime.
Steelmanning the subsidy
The case for government support is not frivolous. Local news is a public good with real democratic value, and its economics genuinely collapsed once advertising migrated to platforms that bore none of journalism's production costs. Broadcasters employ thousands of working reporters, and a 35 percent labour credit is at least transparent, rules-based and auditable — far cleaner than the opaque, litigation-heavy bargaining the Online News Act set in motion. If the policy goal is keeping journalists employed, a payroll credit is a defensible instrument.
But the design here fails on its own terms. A subsidy meant to rescue struggling journalism is being routed disproportionately to some of Canada's most profitable, diversified communications conglomerates — firms whose news divisions are a small slice of businesses spanning wireless, cable, sports and entertainment. Tying the benefit to existing payroll rewards scale, not vulnerability, channeling the most money to the players who need it least while independent and local outlets fight over the remainder.
The deeper problem: dependence by design
The core objection is structural. Stacking a treasury-funded credit on top of a faltering platform-payment scheme makes newsrooms answerable to the state for an ever-larger share of their revenue. A press whose payroll is underwritten by annual government appropriations and whose digital reach was already shaped by a law that drove Meta to de-list Canadian news is a press with a growing conflict of interest baked into its balance sheet. Every renewal of the credit becomes a lever; every expansion, a dependency.
That the Online News Act needs propping up at all is the tell. The link-tax theory held that platforms unfairly profited from news and could be made to pay a market-clearing price. Instead Meta exited the category entirely, traffic to Canadian publishers fell, and Google's capped contribution had to be politically negotiated rather than competitively set. A working market mechanism would not require a parallel subsidy to keep its intended beneficiaries afloat.
A better path
If Ottawa wants to support journalism without entrenching incumbents or fostering dependence, the levers exist: neutral, capped per-journalist credits with hard ceilings that prevent large firms from claiming the bulk; means-testing or weighting toward genuinely local and independent outlets; and, above all, fixing the upstream policy that pushed platforms to drop Canadian news rather than carry it. Repealing or substantially narrowing the link-tax framework would let Canadians find domestic journalism through the open web again — a larger prize than any annual cheque.
The Spring Economic Update frames the tax-credit expansion as helping journalism. On the evidence, it mostly helps Bell, Rogers and Corus. Before this consultation hardens into legislation, Parliament should ask whether doubling a subsidy that flows to the country's biggest broadcasters is the same thing as saving the news.