[TurningCanadian]

I haven't seen anyone put any other alternatives up for debate.

I know Poilievre has talked about defunding the CBC, but I don't know of anything he has proposed that would result in more local journalists.

Do you have an alternative in mind? We need some way to get $ into journalists' pockets while also having some accountability.

Increased CBC funding? It's probably better to have a diverse set (i.e. not just one being subsidized) of news outlets, so the Liberal plan here makes more sense to me, though there's also an argument for not spreading things too thin across lots of tiny outlets.

Instead of taxing the streamers, require they provide local content directly? I think that this proposal is doing that indirectly. The streamers get taxed, but could pick up some $ from the CRTC if they start producing more local content.

Instead of taxing the streamers, tax people directly? That'd probably be less popular than taxing the streamers, so good luck with that.

[hylaride]

There's a danger in "We need to do something, this is something, therefore we should do it".

Government subsidies flow to those who know the system. If what you want is journalists being paid by those people who know the system (probably postmedia, rogers, and bell), then this may be the solution you're looking for. However, it'll likely make it even harder for different viewpoints to compete, not only against big companies alone, but ones that get subsidies.

In the UK there's some ground-up work being done with some local newspapers becoming charities ( https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/15/glimmer-of-hop... ). This, plus some very specific tax advantages, could provide news viewpoints of all stripes and not be beholden to funding conditions that may or may not make sense for the news source. It's just one example, but it's not tied to funding that can be easily manipulated by governments of the day. Subsidized organizations also often tend to get lazy.