While the Trudeau government bought off local journalists through the $50 million Local Journalism Initiative, they reportedly did not maintain records on who they paid.
According to True North, who initially reported on the story, the Department of Canadian Heritage said that “to protect the arm’s-length relationship between the Government and supported news organizations, the program is administered by seven not-for-profit organizations that represent different segments of the news sector.”
“Therefore, the Department of Canadian Heritage is not directly involved in application processes nor funding decisions and does not collect third-party personally-identifiable information during the course of the administration of the program,” they added.
The Local Journalism Initiative is not to be confused with the widely reported newspaper bailout, which saw Trudeau paying $595 million in taxpayer cash to corporations who owned newspapers.
Instead, the Local Journalism Initiative moves money directly into the pockets of individual journalists. Instead of going into the bank accounts of the outlet, Trudeau reminds these anonymous journalists every two weeks who butters their bread.
