Meanwhile governments and brands continue to spend budgets with American digital giants
Let’s talk news by the numbers. News Media Canada released a presentation this spring that put into perspective the impact that news media still has in Canada.
Among the highlights, I learned 71 per cent of Canadians follow news closely, consuming on average 6.5 articles per day.
Twenty-two per cent of Canadians consider themselves news junkies, spending a great deal of their day reading articles from multiple sources, in multiple mediums.
Eighty-six per cent of Canadians will read newspapers in some format (print and online). This is actually a five per cent jump from the year before.
In a country of 41 million people, almost 24 million newspapers are distributed across Canada each week in multiple languages. Just under 10 million of those are hyper-local community weeklies such as ours. That represents a significant majority of rural Canadians who still get and read their local paper every week. Meanwhile, nearly 15 million dailies are still being distributed and read across the country. Even urbanites haven’t given up on the medium.
Canadians also trust newspapers, relying on the print/e-edition over TV, radio, and magazines in traditional format. Digitally, they also trust news media websites over Google, Youtube, and significantly more than the likes of Facebook, X or TikTok.
Canada’s news media sector is an economic Goliath, contributing $22.6 billion annually.
It directly employs 137,600 people nationwide. That’s more than auto manufacturing, mining, or telecom!
Canadian newspapers alone spend tens, if not hundreds of millions with Canada Post, Canadian printing plants, the Canadian pulp industry, the auto sector, fuel suppliers, trucking companies, computer technology dealers – just to name a few.
Despite the economic benefits I’ve just described, you’ll never guess what the federal government spent on advertising with print media last year (fiscal ’24-’25) out of their $78.15 million total declared ad spend.
$222,000.
That’s not a typo.
A whopping 0.284 per cent of their total dollars spent advertising various notices and programs, was with a medium that reaches 60 per cent of Canadians every week in print alone, is trusted by 66 per cent (highest of any media), and is consumed in some format by 86 per cent of Canadians overall.
For local context, our publication recevied $0 in that same period.
Traditional media still received $26.63 million in total, although $8.34 million of that went to ‘out-of-home’ formats like billboards, not a significant contributor to the news media sector.
Digital media on the other hand received $40.57 million, with its largest spend being on display programmatic and non-programmatic (think Google Ads) while $7.55 million (34 times the print spend) was with social media (think Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn).
What’s wrong with this picture?
For starters, they’re all American.
Yes, the majority of Canada’s federal ad spend is with American companies, owned by American billionaires. These companies will never pay taxes to our country, property taxes to fix our streets, and they’ll certainly never sponsor the big hockey tournament.
A pillar of our economy and democracy is being bled out in favour of cheap click ads, annoying Youtube pre-rolls, and sponsored social media posts that are swiftly scrolled past, usually accompanied by an audible grunt.
It gets worse.
“For every $100 a brand spends on advertising, $74 immediately leaves Canada,” says Sarah Thompson of Canadian Media Means Business, an industry association that measures the economic value of Canadian media.
In fact, CMMB estimates as much as 94 per cent of the total digital ad spend in Canada completely surpassed the nation’s economic ecosystem. One click and the money went straight out.
All this while 1,000 news jobs vanished last year. 11,000 since 2019.
Has Canada lost the plot?
“Shop Local.”
“Buy Canadian.”
“Elbows Up.”
Oh, except when it comes to media, small town media in particular, I guess.
I grew up in a small town, and when I entered the business world, I was quickly introduced to the Local 101 flow chart.
In order for our little ecosystems to work, Person 1 gives money to Person 2. Person 2 gives money to Person 3. Person 3 gives money to Person 4. Person 4 gives money to Person 1. Round and round it goes. By supporting within your community, you keep money in your community. It’s not a flawless system, returns can diminish, but here’s the alternative. Person 6 takes money from Person 5. Person 6 spends it all in another country. The cycle is broken. That money will never return.
That’s what’s happening to the news media business in Canada.
The leaders we elect to know better have essentially become Person 6.
To be clear, this isn’t a call for governments and brands to further bloat their budgets.
It’s about making the current spend more equitable, and more fiscally and economically responsible. At the bare minimum, it’s about supporting Canada’s media industry to the same degree it supports the US tech industry.
Canadians agree.
A recent study conducted for News Media Canada shows that 68 per cent of people across the nation think that governments should adopt a “Buy Canadian” approach and commit a fair percentage of advertising to Canadian-owned media.
“A 25 per cent advertising set-aside for news, done right, can ensure the Government of Canada reaches the 86 per cent of Canadians who engage with newspaper content each week in a brand safe environment,” says Paul Deegan, President and CEO of NMC.
One of the things that has damaged the news business in Canada is the false notion of irrelevancy. A convenient narrative for mega corporations selling online ads.
“The challenge facing newspapers, particularly those in rural areas, has never been about a loss of readers, it’s a loss of advertisers moving ad budgets to tech giants based outside Canada,” says Jeff Beardsworth, CEO of AdCanada Media.
“There’s a misguided fixation on whether or not people still read newspapers, when in reality the focus should be on the importance of local news and whether or not people still want to know what’s happening in the community. If the answer is ‘yes’ then the local newspaper should be a priority for advertisers.
“Local news will never disappear.”
It’s not all bad. One province gives us hope: Ontario.
In 2024, the Province of Ontario directed that the largest four government agencies allocate a minimum of 25 per cent of their annual spend with Ontario publishers. The government made a similar commitment with its own direct ad spending. This incredible investment in keeping media strong “has made a big difference to Ontario’s community newspaper publishers over the past year-and-a-half,” said Gordon Cameron, Executive Director of the Ontario Community Newspapers Association.
That also means it has helped grow the economy at large.
It is estimated by CMMB that every $1 million invested in Canadian-owned media creates 8.23 local jobs and adds $1 million back to our GDP.
You don’t have to be an economist to see why this works, and why we need a stronger commitment from all levels of government to Buy Canadian.
Eric Anderson
Publisher, The Community Press
Vice President, Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association
Sources
1. News by the Numbers – https://nmc-wp-uploads.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/13184343/News-By-the-Numbers-Presentation_EN-05.13.2026-1.pdf | compiled by News Media Canada and featuring data from Totum Research, Stagwell Global, Canadian Journalism Foundation, Canadian Media Means Business, Local News Research Project, Leger DGTL.
2. News Media Canada – https://nmc-mic.ca/2026/04/22/more-than-two-thirds-of-canadians-are-supportive-of-the-federal-government-committing-a-portion-of-its-advertising-spend-to-canadian-owned-media – “More than two-thirds of Canadians are supportive of the federal government committing a portion of its advertising spend to Canadian-owned media”
3. Annual Report on Government of Canada advertising activities 2024 to 2025 – https://www.canada.ca/en/public-services-procurement/services/communication/government-advertising/annual-reports/2024-2025-report.html
Hadn’t thought of it this way. Quite interesting how other major economic drivers are bailed out, handled with kid gloves, kept on life support for years and years. But when it comes to media, I guess our country is okay just letting it all fly out the window.
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