Letter from Unifor national president Lana Payne and Western regional director Gavin McGarrigle to Premier David Eby:
March 20, 2025
The Honourable David Eby, M.L.A.
Premier of British Columbia
Dear Premier Eby,
SENT VIA EMAIL
Re: Supporting Local News in British Columbia
Newspapers and local news serve the public good and are essential to a healthy democracy. The rise of the internet has severely diminished the number of professional journalists that write for Canadian newspapers and Unifor is at the forefront of the fight to keep the industry healthy. We have lost thousands of journalism jobs over the past several decades and newspapers are struggling to stay open. News deserts, great swaths of Canadian territory without any local news source, are becoming the new normal, hurting our democracy.
So, what can the Government of British Columbia do about it?
First, use your advertising budget to support local news. There is precedent for this. Last summer, your colleague, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, directed Crown corporations such as the LCBO, the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation (OCRC), the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG), and Metrolinx to invest 25 per cent of their advertising spend to Ontario-based news businesses. He has done the same with his government’s own spending. New York City’s Local Law 83 mandates compliance toward spending 50 per cent of advertising on ethnic and community media.
This is a forward-looking, smart policy that would immediately get badly needed revenue to news businesses who are losing scarce ad dollars to American and Chinese Big Tech firms. And it does not involve any additional taxpayer dollars.
Second, exempt newspapers from punitive Extended Producer Responsibility fees. The newsprint that our news is written on is one of the most common recycling materials. Recycling newsprint also saves trees. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) sounds like a great initiative. Make the producers of plastics and packaging responsiblefor the recycling of that packaging. The only catch is that newspapers are not packaging, they are the product – an important product that is already the most widely and most successful recycling material.
That is why Ontario has exempted newspapers from their EPR program. The extra burden of this program on newspaper publishers will only create costs that cannot be afforded by an industry already stretched and facing so many obstacles. We respectfully urge the B.C. government to follow Ontario and many other jurisdictions in the United States and exempt newsprint from your EPR program.
Thank you for your consideration of these issues. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this further, please feel free to contact us.
Sincerely,
Lana Payne Gavin McGarrigle
National President, Unifor Western Regional Director, Unifor
CC:
The Honourable Tamara Davidson, Minister of Environment and Parks, ([email protected]), Randy Kitt, Director of Media, Unifor, ([email protected]), Brian Gibson, President, Unifor Local 2000, ([email protected])
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