How Doug Ford Funneled Millions to the Biggest News Orgs (and Shut Out the Rest)

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It seemed like such a good plan. Doug Ford tried to save local news with cash from weed, liquor, and gambling. He told four provincial agencies, the ones in charge of booze, pot, the lottery, and transportation, that they had to buy ads from local Ontario publishers. Buy Canadian. This directive came after years of provincial ad money being funneled to American tech and media. Millions of Canadian taxpayer dollars fed to Meta or Google for ad buys or the now notorious $8 million ad spend that included a government of Ontario Super Bowl ad. They were basically advertising to Canadians through American outlets. So for Ontario publishers the about face to a Buy Canadian advertising plan was a welcome change.

So how did it pan out? Where did the millions in ad spending actually go? Who won? Who lost out on the cash? Our reporter Gemma Boothroyd went digging for answers.

And those questions Gemma chased are all the more important now that the Federal Government is rumoured to be considering scaling up the Ontario plan to the federal level.

Host: Jesse Brown

Credits: Gemma Boothroyd (Reporter), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), Tristan (Audio Editing & Production), Jesse Brown (Editor and Publisher)

Fact checking by Julian Abraham

Additional music by Audio Network

Image by LGOntario

More information:

Ontario ad campaign 'It's Happening Here' has cost taxpayers $8M | CBC NewsDoug Ford promises 25 per cent of government agency, provincial advertising budgets to local media outlets — Toronto Star