‘We’re pretty close, by my estimation, to a 50 percent wage subsidy on journalist salaries up to $85,000 per year,’ said Canadian journalist Rudyard Griffiths.

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OTTAWA, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — The Trudeau government could significantly subsidize mainstream media salaries following the Google agreement and recent federal payouts.

Legacy media journalists are projected have roughly half of their salaries paid by the Liberal government following the November 29 $100 million Google agreement and the subsidies outlined in the Fall Economic Statement.

“We’re pretty close, by my estimation, to a 50 percent wage subsidy on journalist salaries up to $85,000 per year,” Canadian journalist and executive director of The Hub Rudyard Griffiths said.

Mainstream media in Canada already received massive federal payouts, but they have nearly doubled in recent weeks. In November, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced increased payouts for legacy media outlets ahead of the 2025 election. The subsidies are expected to cost taxpayers $129 million over the next five years.

Beginning in 2019, Parliament changed the Income Tax Act to give yearly rebates of 25 percent for each news employee in cabinet-approved media outlets earning up to $55,000 a year, to a maximum of $13,750.

However, the Canadian Heritage Department has since admitted that the payouts are not sufficient to keep legacy media outlets running. Accordingly, the Trudeau government doubled the rebates to a maximum of $29,750 annually, up to 35 percent of a journalist’s salary.

Now, the Trudeau government announced a deal with Google to publish Canadian news under the recently passed Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18. Under the new agreement, Google will pay legacy media outlets $100 million to publish links to their content on both the Google search engine and YouTube.

As a result of both the recent subsidies and the Google agreement, Griffiths estimated that roughly half the salary of a journalist earning $85,000 would in fact be paid by the combined contributions of the Trudeau government and Google.

“What does it mean long term when as much as half of the newsroom costs of private media organizations, not the CBC, will be paid for by government support?” Griffiths questioned.“This likely is not going to be positive for the ongoing challenges that mainstream media is facing in terms of declining public trust in the very news and information that they produce,” he added.

According to a recent study by Canada’s Public Health Agency (PHA), less than a third of Canadians displayed “high trust” in the federal government, with “large media organizations” as well as celebrities getting even lower scores.

Large mainstream media outlets and “journalists” working for them scored a “high trust” rating of only 18 percent. This was followed by only 12 percent of people saying they trusted “ordinary people,” with celebrities garnering only an eight percent “trust” rating.

Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop more online censorship laws