Postmedia, the largest right-wing, free market-worshipping newspaper chain in Canada, has gobbled up another $10.2 million in funding disbursed under the Online News Act (ONA).
In 2023, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government reached a deal with Google that has allowed the company to continue sharing Canadian news on its platforms in exchange for providing $100 million in funding annually to news publications across the country.
The Canadian Journalism Collective (CJC) was created in 2024 to receive the money provided by Google and disburse it to applying Canadian media outlets that meet the program’s criteria.
As per how it determines who should get the funds, the CJC states, “The Canadian Parliament set the eligibility criteria through the Online News Act and the Canadian federal government established detailed requirements through regulations. The CJC-CCJ applies these existing rules; we don’t create them.”
They add, “We verify technical eligibility criteria set out in the Act and regulations. We do not make judgments about the quality, accuracy, or editorial content of journalism—only whether organizations meet the objective legal requirements to qualify.”
The CJC has completed two annual funding cycles thus far, and Postmedia has been the largest recipient of disbursed funds. The newspaper chain received more than $6.6 million in the first year and an additional $10.2 million this year for a total of at least $16.9 million thus far.
The next four-largest recipients of funding are Bell Media ($16.8 million), the CBC ($13.8 million), Corus Entertainment ($10.9 million) and The Globe and Mail ($7.7 million).
Smaller media outlets in Canada have also received Google money, including The Narwhal (more than $540,000), The Tyee (more than $491,000) and Canadaland (more than $432,000).
(Full disclosure: The Maple is 100 per cent reader funded and did not apply for this funding, nor will we do so going forward.)
Postmedia has been criticized for the significant public funding it receives.
In 2025, CWA Canada, which describes itself as the “oldest and only all-media union in Canada, with about 6,000 members,” published an open letter on what they called “Postmedia’s Abuse of Canadian Taxpayers’ Money.”
The union noted that about 63 per cent of Postmedia is owned by Chatham Asset Management, which they described as an “American hedge fund with ties to the MAGA Republican Party.”
They claimed: “The most shocking part of this corporate set up is that it allows Postmedia to send tens of millions of dollars to its American masters every year, while at the same time crying poor and in need of money from the Canadian government.”
The letter concluded by arguing: “If Postmedia gets Canadian subsidies, it should be required to use every penny of that money on news content, creating jobs, and decent pay for its workers. The money must not go to executive compensation or to fund an American financialization scheme.”
Postmedia has received a wide-range of government funds, including from the Canadian Journalism Labour Tax Credit, the Canada Periodical Fund and the Local Journalism Initiative, for more than $72.6 million all together from the former two alone since 2019.
The CJC is currently administering applications for the next year of funding. The full list of recipients of Google money thus far can be found on its website.
