(LifeSiteNews) –– Managers at one of Canada’s largest government-funded newspaper chains implied to shareholders that if the Conservatives had won the 2025 federal election it could harm the industry.

While not naming the Conservative Party directly, the publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press, the very newspaper that led a campaign for an $595 million media bailout at the expense of taxpayers, noted that “[u]ncertainty of the political landscape” posed a threat to their business model.

Indeed, the managers of FP Canadian Newspapers Ltd. of which the Winnipeg Free Press is under, went as far to write to shareholders: “The uncertainty of the political landscape continues to impact the newspaper industry, the impact of which may necessitate cost reduction initiatives to address the continued revenue decline and reliance on government subsidies.”

Last year, the company got $2.8 million in taxpayers’ payroll rebates. The newspaper management wrote: “There can be no assurance the amounts accrued will be realized or that these tax credit programs will continue to be available to us in the future or will not be reduced, changed or eliminated.”

“Any future elimination or reductions of these tax credits or amendments to, or unfavourable determinations regarding, their application could increase our costs, having an adverse effect on our business,” they said.

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who lost the April 28 election to Liberal leader Mark Carney, had said that he wanted to end the payroll rebates, saying in August of last year,  “Sell subscriptions and advertising, get sponsorships and do what media have done for, I don’t know, 3,000 years.”

Law was changed in 2019 to allow legacy media large tax rebates

The Liberal government under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau threw large amounts of money at legacy media outlets, despite Canadians increasingly turning to alternative media sources for their news.

In 2019, under the former Liberal government of Trudeau, the Income Tax Act was changed to aid legacy media, so that rebates of up to $13,750 per employee would be given, but only to government-approved news outlets.

In 2024, the payroll rebates were doubled to a maximum of  $29,750 per employee.

Then publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press, Box Cox, said at the time in advocating for the rebates, “We will have to save ourselves,” adding, “All of us are engaged in transforming our business models so we can continue to fulfill the key role that a free press must play in a healthy democracy.”

Earlier this year, Trudeau’s Liberal government pledged to increase Canada’s state broadcaster’s the CBC’s, funding to some $2 billion annually.

Poilievre, in early 2025, promised if his government won the 2025 election it would end the mainstream media’s stronghold over the Parliamentary Press Gallery, calling the current system “highly undemocratic” in which only a “small cabal of government-approved mouthpieces” are permitted membership.