JANUARY 23, 2025
Last summer, the Lake Report, which serves Niagara-on-the-Lake, a community of nineteen thousand in Southern Ontario, had a rare opportunity. The paper’s reporters were invited to a small gathering with Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, who was stopping by a farming cooperative in town. Poilievre is generally press-averse, partial to friendly platforms—his own YouTube and Instagram channels, Jordan Peterson’s podcast.
The Lake Report pounced, sending both of its reporters. They asked first thing about how Poilievre would handle the government’s support of local journalism.
“He started bashing it,” Richard Harley, the editor, recalled. Poilievre spoke about his plans to do away with public funds for Canadian media, on which the Lake Report relies. “This would be a dagger in the industry of news, especially for smaller papers,” Harley told me. “It would be devasting for us.”
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