John Carpay: Canadians Can Decide for Themselves Which Media Outlets Are ‘Qualified’

Commentary

If Rebel News is not a “qualified Canadian journalism organization” producing “original” news, then neither is the CBC nor a myriad of other government-funded media outlets.

Yet the Federal Court of Appeal in Rebel News Network Ltd. v. Canada (Attorney General) recently upheld the decision of the Minister of National Revenue that Rebel News is not a “qualified Canadian journalism organization” within the meaning of the Income Tax Act.

The media outlet was punished for failing to produce a vague and impossible-to-know quantity of “original news” content that must be based on “facts and multiple perspectives” and “produced in accordance with journalistic processes and principles,” including “a consistent practice of providing rebuttal opportunity for those being criticized and presenting alternate perspectives, interpretations and analyses.”

Rebel News unabashedly reports and advocates from a perspective that might be called conservative, libertarian, populist, or right-of-centre. Kudos to this supporter-funded media outlet for having the honesty to admit its bias, rather than pretending—as almost all other media outlets do—that its reporting is neutral, objective, and entirely unbiased.

In days gone by, some Canadian newspapers stated publicly whether they supported the Liberals or the Conservatives, so that readers would know that at least some of the news would be reported with an identifiable bias. Nobody is neutral. Everyone has a bias or perspective, if not on all issues then certainly on some. Anyone claiming to deliver entirely objective news is either not being truthful or is lacking in self-awareness. The only honest thing for media outlets to do is disclose their bias or perspective to their readers, listeners, and viewers.

Many outlets practice bias by interviewing only those who agree with their political ideology, which holds that most problems can be readily and easily solved through more government spending, legislation, and new regulations. Those who believe that government is the problem rather than the solution, and those whose values are traditional rather than “progressive,” are rarely interviewed by them.

Why empower government through the Income Tax Act to be the judge as to which media (if any) consistently provide “multiple perspectives,” a “rebuttal opportunity for those being criticized,” and “alternate perspectives, interpretations and analyses”? Why not leave it to Canadians to decide for themselves, without the use of state power?

The Charter expressly protects “freedom of the press and other media of communication” alongside the fundamental “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression.” The court’s ruling is a symptom of a much bigger problem in Canada: active government interference with freedom of the press and other media of communication, through financial rewards and punishments.

A free and independent press is foundational to any free democracy. Financial dependency on government undermines the ability of media to report the news objectively. The same goes for special tax benefits awarded only to the government’s favourite media outlets through the “qualified Canadian journalism organization” category.

Today, Canada’s media industry is heavily supported by government subsidies. The CBC alone received $1.58 billion in taxpayer-funding in 2025–26. Supposedly “private” newsrooms and publishers are also heavily subsidized: approximately $70 million per year through the journalism labour tax credit, $20 million through the Local Journalism Initiative, and $75-85 million through the Canada Periodical Fund.

Ottawa spends an additional $80 million per year on federal advertising, yet another stream of taxpayer money that props up the same industry. On top of this, even more funding goes towards film and television through the Canada Media Fund, Telefilm, and the National Film Board of Canada. Most of this taxpayer-supported spending goes to a short list of public and approved private recipients, not to an open market. Invariably, recipients of taxpayers’ money are those who support (or at least refrain from opposing) the government’s ideological and policy agenda.

Despite massive subsidies extracted from taxpayers and given to “mainstream” media, public confidence and trust in media continues to decline. Perhaps this is not merely correlational: Canadians know what the expression “don’t bite the hand that feeds you” means. The Reuters Institute puts overall trust in news at 37 percent—a staggering drop of 20 points since 2018. Over that same period, the share of Canadians who say they definitely do not trust the media has risen from 17 to 30 percent. Almost half of Canadians now say they sometimes or often avoid the news.

A free press cannot be a subsidized press. Restoring freedom of the press in Canada requires ending all direct and indirect taxpayer subsidies for all media.

John Carpay, B.A., LL.B. is President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca).

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.