News Media Canada’s president and CEO Paul Deegan has submitted a brief regarding Canada Post. Please read his call to action, urging the Canadian government and Canada Post to reconsider their decisions with advertising and distribution of print journalism.
News Media Canada represents 550 trusted news titles across Canada – everything from large national newspapers to two-person independent weekly community newspapers. I’m joined by Murray Elliott, one of our member publishers from Olds, Alberta.
Before I begin, let me state the obvious: Canada Post is not financially viable without significant changes. Absent a wholesale restructuring, it will continue to lose millions of taxpayer dollars a day.
Canada Post is an important national institution. Like our newspapers, its stamps help tell the story of Canada and the success stories of Canadians. By way of example, in 2021, it unveiled five stamps that celebrate five of Canada’s greatest editorial cartoonists. One was by Terry Mosher of the Montreal Gazette. Aislin, as he’s known, depicted a beaver sporting a hockey jersey with a maple leaf playing a bear whose jersey said CCCP.
I cannot stress enough how important Canada Post is as a distribution vehicle for many community newspapers across Canada, especially in rural and remote parts of the country. And we deeply appreciate the work that thousands of postal employees do to get our newspapers to Canadians no matter rain, snow, sleet, or hail.
However, the current leadership of both Canada Post and CUPW have shown a disregard for community newspapers. They seem to have forgotten that we are customers. And good paying ones at that.
Let me cite two recent examples where publishers, many of whom are small businesses, are being harmed:
First, as of January 2024, community newspapers with commercial inserts are no longer exempt from Canada Post’s Consumers’ Choice program, which allows Canadians to opt out of receiving ‘junk mail’.
Like advertisements on the pages of a newspaper, commercial inserts pay for the content our journalists produce in community newspapers. Let me be clear: community newspapers with a flyer from the local hardware or grocery franchisee are not ‘junk mail’. Here’s what the impact of that decision looks like on the ground. The loss of $120,000 in annual flyer revenue to a community newspaper supports three jobs. Without that revenue, those three jobs are at high risk.
This arbitrary decision was made with zero stakeholder consultation or economic/social impact analysis. We hope Parliament will direct Canada Post to reverse this bone-headed decision.
Second, the decision by CUPW this September to escalate strike activity by neither processing nor delivering unaddressed flyers (Neighbourhood Mail) — whether intended or not — held community newspaper publishers hostage and deprived many Canadians of fact-based, fact-checked community news.
Again, let me stress: community newspapers are not “junk mail”.
While some of our publishers have service issues with their local postal station, these are generally isolated. And Canada Post has dramatically improved its resolution process in the past few years. For that, I would like to thank Mark Nailer and Julie Plouffe from Canada Post’s commercial mail division, who are always extremely helpful and responsive.
You may ask:
Why don’t you just abandon print and go digital? Wouldn’t that solve distribution challenges and your reliance on Canada Post?
With foreign tech giants creaming most of the digital ad dollars in this country, the economics of digital just don’t work for many. Digital ad dollars may be able to support large operations with scale or niche websites devoted to unpaid commentary, but we still need print ads and flyers to support a newsroom of full-time local journalists who do the hard painstaking work of covering cops, courts, and city hall. Real news costs real money.
Speaking of digital ad dollars, I would encourage this committee to examine federal advertising spending. The government’s agency of record is doing what is easiest and most profitable for them.
In 2023-2024, the Government of Canada spent more than $76 million on advertising. Of that, less than $1.4 million went to all print publications in the country combined.
Taxpayer dollars should be spent in Crowsnest Pass – not California and on companies that deliver facts, rather than on those whose algorithms foment misinformation and disinformation.
The Government should follow the Province of Ontario’s lead and announce in its November 4th Budget that it is setting aside a minimum of 25 per cent of ad spending for trusted news brands. And that comes as zero additional cost to the taxpayer.
Paul Deegan is president and chief executive officer of News Media Canada
