“Alas poor Yorick, I knew him…” (Hamlet, Shakespeare)
It may be a fitting image of Liberal policies (former) being cast aside by an emerging generation of citizens who are struck by the dissonance between what they see and what is being presented. Yorick being all that is left of a once proud icon of what Canadian government aspired to do for those it represented.
As a matter of policy and ideology, Canada and democratic societies anywhere, adhere officially to the precept that a free, unconstrained, press/media is the mainstay of a responsible, transparent and accountable government. That press/media relies on the marketplace for the nourishment it may require to sustain the infrastructure required to generate the facts and analyses to maintain the vibrancy of its/their critique and informative cycle of news – a cycle that, in turn, generates trust or engenders wholesome debate in the search for truth.
The Government is a major player in that marketplace. It has a self-declared obligation to inform the citizenry of the programs designed – at the public’s expense – to mitigate life’s challenges for the residents and citizens of the country. A free press/media provides that infrastructure, if for no other reason other than it has an intrinsic, existential need to securely “deliver it to its targeted readership/audience”.
For a reason unknown to rational man/woman, the government of Canada decided to wash its hands of any duty to inform its taxpayers of how or why it spends their money, without even verifying that they received the message. So, in their yearly reports indicating how their communications strategy unfolds via radio/tv, print media and social media. In dollar terms 2023-24, that amounted to $72 million. We note that the twenty-two (22) agencies of government have continued their non-confidence in local/national print media as an effective, relevant medium for their messages.
We know that it spends annually a minimal amount (1.5%) on print. Virtually zero% for third language press, even though Census Canada 2021 suggests that 24% of Canadians still operate in their language of origin. One guesses that does not matter to the [Trudeau] government.
It should. It spent considerable energy and resources trying to redefine the dynamic of messaging and delivery by introducing and passing through an Online News Act, through which they offloaded their responsibility to Digital Platforms as “carriers”. Therein lies the irony.
These digital platforms responded to inducement and/or threats and behaved according to their interests. For better or for worse, Google, to gain ongoing advertising contracts and to participate in the tech programs of government, agreed to contribute $100 million annually to the maintenance of a viable Press/Media. Facebook-Meta and its affiliates said, “up your nose with a rubber hose”, preferring to be “shut out” … maybe.
Last week, the government decided to grant Meta a contract of $100,000 (or was it $300,000?… one never knows) to promote the government’s rebate program on (fill in the blank, it no longer matters, ask Yorick). The argument for this reversal? – the public has a right to be informed of the government’s programs
What a slap in the face! I wonder what Google was thinking.
In the pic above, Justin Trudeau with some of his Ministers (photo from his Facebook page) and, in the small image, Yorik
