Senator Andrew Cardozo dropped by the Gazette offices this summer, after getting lunch at Penny’s Pantry. 

He’s an Independent, appointed by Justin Trudeau in 2022, and a member of the Senate’s Progressive group.  

His policy priorities include Canada-US relations, polarization in political discourse, sustaining Canada’s news media, and securing the future of the CBC. 

Before joining the Senate, Mr. Cardozo was the President and co-founder of the Pearson Centre for Progressive Policy, where he convened public policy leaders from politics, business, labour, NGOs, and the public for over a decade.

He also served as Commissioner of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in the 2000s.  In 2023, Mr. Cardozo received the DreamKeepers Citation for Outstanding Leadership, which honours those who exemplify the values of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

He visits the County regularly with his family, staying at the Isaiah Tubbs resort on East Lake.

The occasion of the Senator’s visit was his newly released report, co-authored with Howard Law, called “Making News Media Sustainable.” It’s the second in a series.

“The subject is pressing,” he noted. “A change in government would jeopardize most or all funding arrangements successive Liberal governments have put in place to sustain journalism in this country. 

“We aren’t going to have a Liberal government forever.”

The PC party has, of course, made defunding the CBC a key part of its platform. “This is the first time a major party is calling for defunding: the Official Opposition,” he noted. 

The election of Mark Carney as PM in 2025 meant a stay of execution for the CBC — but, as Senator Cardozo stressed, “that was a reprieve only; the programs successive Liberal governments have put in place are in jeopardy.” 

“Leaders never like media coverage, it’s always negative, why would they?” As President Trump’s attacks on the media have made crystal clear, a free and independent press, like free speech, is a crucial democratic pillar. 

“Without a free press you cannot say you have a democracy,” says the Senator. 

This isn’t an abstract issue. Last week, after the Gazette published its slate of recommended candidates in the municipal election, one slighted contender hosted a series of Facebook conversations across multiple community pages, slamming our shoddy journalism. It was a classic dispute — aided and abetted, in this case, by the wildfire effect of social media. 

Few of those who pitched in seemed to know much about newspapers — the difference, for example, between an editorial and a news story. They attacked the Gazette for advancing opinions when it was supposed to stick to the facts. 

But a newspaper does both, in different, clearly labelled sections. News and Editorial, for example. Op-Eds and Letters are for opinions and commentary. News and Features are for fact-based reporting. 

But why would those raised on social media know this? It has worked hard to dissolve the distinctions between original, researched, fact-based journalism, and opinion. Informed debate or put downs? What’s the difference? Social media platforms collapse distinctions between facts, arguments, opinion, and slander. They all run into each other, a toxic stew.

Without a strong tradition of informed public debate, democracy is in danger because nobody can tell what’s going on anymore, in the most basic way. On the eve of the other elections this week, those in America, I found myself thinking of the stormers of the Capitol in January 2021. They thought they were defending democracy, too. 

Current supports for qualified journalism organizations include tax credits, funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Local Journalism Initiative, which pays reporters at independent outlets, and the Online News Act. 

Without these supports, it is unlikely the news media will survive the age of social media. It is not that journalists aren’t offering anything of value: the opposite is the case. It is because news outlets are major competitors for attention — clicks and eyeballs — that social media platforms have spent the past decade chasing them off the premises. 

Take Facebook’s response to the Online News Act. Bill C18 requires the largest digital platforms, Google and Meta, to compensate news organizations for the work their platforms reproduce and circulate. 

Meta declined to share any of its revenues with the news producers it once hosted. It opted instead to ban them. 

In May 2023, Facebook delivered half our website’s readership. 

Then came the news ban: in June 2024 readers who found the website via Facebook dropped to zero. 

When we learned to post “workaround links,” readership recovered. 

But now, news orgs aren’t the only websites under attack.  All posts that come with a link are suppressed. It is an explicit Meta policy to prevent people from clicking away. That’s why entire stories — whether AI generated or Substack essays — are now posted to Facebook in long scrolls. Nobody is allowed to leave.

At the Gazette, readers clicking through from Facebook have dropped to just 10 percent over the past year. In many ways, it’s against our interests to post there anymore: it takes time, it takes an emotional toll, and it doesn’t drive readership. Why bother? 

Because we want to get the facts out. It’s our job to participate in shaping informed debate. If everyone is on social media, we need to be there, too. We want our research to find readers. If they also find our website, so much the better.

But back to the Online News Act. Unlike Meta, Google opted in. It now pays publishers and broadcasters $100 million annually for the right to link to news stories. 

The Senator worries that Google, which signed a five-year, $500 million agreement, could follow Meta’s lead and ban news rather than pay for it. I am not so sure about that: Google wouldn’t be much of a search engine if it didn’t deliver real information and resources to those seeking them. 

Google now delivers over half of our website’s readers. Google — and Gemini — are where people go if they want real information, not Facebook. 

Nonetheless, the Senator is right to worry. Together, Google and Meta control virtually all online advertising. That monopoly means Google siphons off billions in profit from independent news websites via Google Ads. It has left them unable to survive without both government supports and the royalty payments of the Online News Act. 

Meanwhile, the next trade agreement could demand the repeal of the Act. Even though $100 million a year is a fraction of what Google takes out of this country — never mind Meta — the US specializes in hijacking any attempt to regulate or tax billionaire tech. 

It has already successfully demanded the shredding of Canada’s Digital Services Tax and the Online Streaming Act. 

 “How can we secure the future for Canadian, and especially local, media, no matter which party is in charge?” asks Senator Cardozo. 

“It’s crucial that people understand the link between democracy and a free and independent press.”