FEDERALlocal-news-directory·Issue № 12 · 13 Sep 2026

Coverage 8 August 2026 to 13 September 2026 · Data: December 2025 memo to the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Access to Information records released 9 September 2026; labour tax credit rates in force 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2026

Canadian Heritage paid $110,000 for the first phase of a directory of local news outlets, with national coverage due in 2028

The project was announced in August with its price and its researchers named, as a map of Canada's news deserts; Access to Information records released on 9 September added a phrase the announcement did not, describing a directory that will help people “struggling to find news they can trust”. That phrase, a full budget withheld under the Act, and a reported link to the tax designation that decides which newsrooms collect federal payroll credits have so far surfaced only in outlets that take no public or regulated money.

The numbers5 figures, each sourced

$110,000

Cost of the completed proof-of-concept phase of Canadian Heritage's local news directory, set out in a December memo to the culture minister obtained under the Access to Information Act - a second phase would map Ontario and Quebec, and a national phase is targeted for completion in 2028

The Canadian Press, Ottawa commissions project to track 'news deserts' in Canada, 8 August 2026

2.5 million

Disconfirming: Canadians living in areas served by one or no local news outlet, per a March 2025 study cited in the same reporting - the measurement problem the directory is being built to address, against roughly 2,900 surviving local outlets and about 25 closures a year since 2008

The Canadian Press, Ottawa commissions project to track 'news deserts' in Canada, 8 August 2026

$29,750

Maximum Canadian journalism labour tax credit for one eligible newsroom employee in a year - 35 per cent of qualifying labour expenditure capped at $85,000 - claimable only by an organization the Canada Revenue Agency has designated a qualified Canadian journalism organization

Canada Revenue Agency, Canadian journalism labour tax credit

25 per cent

Disconfirming: the rate that same credit reverts to for periods after 31 December 2026, down from the 35 per cent in force since 1 January 2023 - the payroll subsidy is scheduled to shrink, not grow

Canada Revenue Agency, Canadian journalism labour tax credit

$128.8 million

Federal money committed to the Local Journalism Initiative, the Canadian Heritage program that pays for reporters in underserved communities, through to March 2027, cited in the same Canadian Press report

The Canadian Press, Ottawa commissions project to track 'news deserts' in Canada, 8 August 2026 (rdnewsnow)

What funded newsrooms reported

Canada's funded newsrooms - the outlets that draw on public or regulated money, from CBC's parliamentary appropriation to the Google payments made under the Online News Act that sent $4.2 million to Postmedia and $2 million to The Globe and Mail in the first round alone - did report this project, and reported it first. Anja Karadeglija of The Canadian Press wrote on 8 August that Canadian Heritage had “recently engaged a team of independent industry experts to develop a local news directory - a multi-phase, multi-year project”, citing a December memo to the culture minister obtained under the Access to Information Act. The same story put the proof-of-concept phase at $110,000, named April Lindgren of Toronto Metropolitan University, Magda Konieczna of Concordia University, Max Hartshorn of the Investigative Journalism Foundation and David Macdonald of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives as the people doing the work, reported that the department was assessing a second phase covering Ontario and Quebec with a national build targeted for 2028, and named Statistics Canada, the CRTC and CBC/Radio-Canada as possible funding partners for it. The Canadian Press is itself inside the funding: CTV News tells readers that the Local Journalism Initiative copy it carries “is made available to us through The Canadian Press” and “is funded by the federal government through Heritage Canada”.

That wire copy travelled. It ran on CP24, in the Lethbridge Herald and the Medicine Hat News, on Barrie 360, Durham Radio News, paNOW and rdnewsnow, and on Narcity. Second Reading found no separate staff-written account of the project at CBC, The Globe and Mail, CTV News, Global News, the Toronto Star or Postmedia's national titles, and no report anywhere in that group of the records released on 9 September - not the memo language about news people can trust, not the withheld budget, not the reported link to the Canada Revenue Agency designation. That is a search result rather than a certainty; a print item or a paywalled piece could sit outside it, and Second Reading did not find one.

The wider worry in this week's independent coverage - that a designation written for tax purposes hardens into a list of approved newsrooms - is not one the funded press has left alone either. The Hub, which sits on Online News Act money, reported that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and Global Affairs Canada had written journalist-selection criteria tracking the qualified Canadian journalism organization test and then backed away from them, and got the Canada Revenue Agency on the record saying the designation “is administered by the CRA for the sole purpose of determining eligibility for tax measures supporting Canadian journalism”.

What was already public

1.
A December memo to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, obtained under the Access to Information Act, records that the department “has recently engaged a team of independent industry experts to develop a local news directory - a multi-phase, multi-year project”, and that “the challenges of creating an up-to-date list of local news outlets at the community level have vexed researchers and policymakers for some time”.
The Canadian Press, Ottawa commissions project to track 'news deserts' in Canada, 8 August 2026
2.
The Canadian journalism labour tax credit is worth 35 per cent of qualifying labour expenditure for the period 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2026, on up to $85,000 per eligible newsroom employee a year, and 25 per cent outside that window. To claim it an organization must first be designated a qualified Canadian journalism organization by the Canada Revenue Agency.
Canada Revenue Agency, Canadian journalism labour tax credit
3.
Designation is refused as well as granted, and the refusals bite. The Canada Revenue Agency rejected Rebel News Network's 2021 application to be a qualified Canadian journalism organization, and in March 2024 Justice Ann Marie McDonald of the Federal Court upheld the refusal as “justified, transparent and intelligible”, noting that of 423 items sampled over three weeks only 10 were original news reports.
CBC News, Federal Court upholds CRA decision denying Rebel News journalism tax credit status
4.
The first distribution of Google's $100 million under the Online News Act, made through the Canadian Journalism Collective in May 2025, paid $4.2 million to Postmedia Network and $2 million to The Globe and Mail, reserved $7 million for CBC and set aside $30 million for broadcasters, with 108 publications sharing more than $22 million in the opening round.
J-Source, First batch of Google's $100 million is paid - here's who won big and who didn't, 27 May 2025
5.
The academic half of the directory team was already mapping this ground with money from outside Ottawa. Toronto Metropolitan University's Local News Research Project, which runs the Local News Map, lists its funders as the university, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, PhiLab, the Ken and Debbie Rubin Advocacy Fund, the Rossy Foundation and MITACS.
Local News Research Project, Toronto Metropolitan University

What the independents said

Outside that funding - no appropriation, no Heritage program, no labour tax credit, no Online News Act money - the records were obtained and published by Blacklock's Reporter, the Ottawa subscription service whose publisher, Holly Doan, has said that “Blacklock's has never accepted donations of any kind ... We do not accept government subsidies”, that of the qualified-organization list “I don't want my company's name on that list, either”, and that Blacklock's has not applied for any of the platform money. Its 10 September story runs under the headline “Gov't To List 'Reliable' Media” and opens: “A government-approved Local News Directory is paying researchers to list media deemed trustworthy and reliable, according to Access To Information records released yesterday”, quoting the department's own line that “it will help people struggling to find news they can trust”. The rest is behind the paywall, and Second Reading has not read it.

Two outlets carried the story the same day. Sheila Gunn Reid, writing for Rebel News, put the spend at $100,000 on a three-year project, named Toronto Metropolitan, Laval and Concordia universities as the researchers, quoted a 26 April departmental memo saying the directory would help “policymakers and others make more data-informed decisions about where interventions are needed”, and reported that the directory focuses on qualified Canadian journalism organizations - the designation that unlocks payroll rebates of up to $29,750 per eligible employee. The Western Standard ran a shorter account under the headline “Liberal government funds directory of 'trustworthy' Canadian news outlets”, crediting the same records.

Rebel News is outside the designation by law rather than by choice, which is part of why the story lands where it does: the Canada Revenue Agency refused its application and the Federal Court upheld that refusal in 2024. Two details in the independent accounts do not match the earlier wire copy and Second Reading could not reconcile them from the primary records, which remain paywalled or withheld: the $100,000 figure against the $110,000 the department gave for the proof-of-concept phase, and Université Laval, which appears in the Rebel News account but not in The Canadian Press's list of the people doing the work.

The gap

Funded newsrooms left out

The funded newsrooms reported the directory in August, in detail, and then did not report the 9 September records at all - not the memo line about helping people find news they can trust, not the budget withheld under the Act, and not the claim that the directory is organised around the tax designation that decides which newsrooms collect federal payroll credits.

The independents left out

The independent accounts did not include what The Canadian Press had already put on the record a month earlier - the $110,000 proof-of-concept cost, the named researchers, the phase-two and 2028 plans, and the department's shortlist of Statistics Canada, the CRTC and CBC/Radio-Canada as funding partners - which makes the September release a fuller view of an announced project rather than the uncovering of a secret one.

The caveat — against our own framing

The case against this issue's framing is strong, and starts with the word “trustworthy”. That word is Blacklock's characterisation of the project, not a quotation from the records: the only departmental language anyone has published is that the directory “will help people struggling to find news they can trust” and that it will help “policymakers and others make more data-informed decisions about where interventions are needed”, which is what every directory of anything claims for itself. The claim that the directory is built around qualified Canadian journalism organizations is load-bearing for the whole story and rests on one paywalled account that Second Reading could not open; it does not appear in The Canadian Press's reporting of the same records, and the Canada Revenue Agency has said on the record that the designation exists “for the sole purpose of determining eligibility for tax measures”. A list of where local news outlets still exist is also not a list of approved outlets, and the people building it - Lindgren, Konieczna, Hartshorn, Macdonald - were mapping this ground for years on university, tri-council and foundation money before Ottawa bought a phase of it. The sum involved is $110,000, which is roughly one reporter for a year. And the direction of travel cuts against the alarm: the payroll credit at the centre of the complaint is legislated to fall from 35 per cent back to 25 per cent after 31 December 2026. Second Reading could not open the underlying Access to Information package and has not seen the memos themselves.