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Paul Deegan: Newspapers are the best way for Ottawa to get its message out

It’s time for the federal government to think like a marketer who cares about reach and efficacy

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Across Canada, governments have supported journalism for generations. Since the founding of Canada’s first newspaper, the Halifax Gazette, which dates to 1752, government advertising has been an important source of revenue for newspapers and has helped ensure that Canadians have access to high-quality, Canadian, fact-based, fact-checked news.

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Despite the government’s stated “buy Canadian” policy, changing its advertising agency of record and spending tens of millions of dollars each year, news publishers are not seeing meaningful federal government advertising dollars.

Paul Deegan: Newspapers are the best way for Ottawa to get its message out Back to video

According to the Government of Canada’s annual report on advertising activities, during the 2024-25 fiscal year, it spent $78.15 million on advertising. Of that, $222,000 went to all print publications in Canada combined. Yet the government spent more than $25.5 million on “display programmatic and non-programmatic” (digital) advertising, $7.5 million on social media and........

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