Candidates ‘unchallenged’ and ‘uncovered’ in federal election as a fallout of dying local media: report

The author of a recent report is sounding the alarm on the lack of candidate coverage in the 2025 federal election, where she said some MP hopefuls escaped scrutiny from local media outlets, pointing to the need for more funding, innovation, and data collection to revitalize the shuttering news scene. “I think we can officially say that in some communities in Canada, you can run for office now, and you will not be challenged once by someone who is a trained reporter, or calls themselves a journalist,” said Alison Uncles, one of the authors of the Public Policy Forum (PPF) analysis. Uncovered, written in partnership with the Rideau Hall Foundation and the Michener Awards Foundation, examined reporting on the 2025 contest through five case studies of regions with different levels of access to local media: Bonavista, N.L.; Richmond, B.C.; Laval, Que.; Vaughan, Ont.; and Yellowknife, N.W.T. It found that in some ridings, there were no debates or town halls whatsoever, and in others, limited to no journalism related to the federal candidates. “The outlets aren’t there,” said Uncles, the former editor-in-chief of Maclean’s and who is now vice-president of PPF media and communications. “Candidates are now understanding that they can comfortably ignore reporters.” Uncles pointed to Laval, Que., where there is only one local Francophone outlet—called Courrier Laval—still operating. The city had no local candidate debates or town hall this April, the report found, and candidates were reluctant to engage with local issues and media, leading to minimal coverage and misinformation spreading online. “Unverified information circulated on social media,” the report reads. “Aggregator sites pulled content from the web, like press releases, and spit them back out as ‘news.’” Uncles explained that though there was a lack of media engagement, candidates running in the city were still advertising their positions which, due to the lack of coverage, were “unchallenged.” “Obviously, that’s not what a healthy democracy wants,” she said. “When it convenes an election, a healthy democracy challenges each other and asks questions and has debates.” Laval is not an isolated case. In the last election, a number of now-MPs and candidates didn’t attend all-candidate forums. In Abbotsford—South Langley, B.C., some citizens launched a petition, demanding “accountability” from their Conservative candidate Sukhman Gill, who is now the constituency’s MP. The petition, signed by 4,614 people as of Aug. 22, called on Gill to “participate in public debates and media interviews,” or be disqualified from running. Prime Minister Mark Carney arrives for the Federal Leaders debate at The Maison de Radio-Canada in Montréal, Que. on April 17, 2025. (Photo: Andrew Meade/Hill Times Publishing) Sonja Macdonald, who coauthored a March report on the state of local news across Canada for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), said a similar situation happened in a riding in the city of Hamilton, Ont., where she lives. In Hamilton Centre, the Liberal candidate and now rookie MP Aslam Rana, who ousted the NDP incumbent Matthew Green, no-showed the Cable 14 debate. Macdonald, who is a principal of the participatory planning firm Civicplan, said she found the move “shocking.” But ghosting candidate debates became consistent across parties last election, she said, as many “didn’t see the value” in participating, which makes her “concerned” about what it means for political accountability. “Folks can contact constituency offices or complain via social media or neighbourhood Facebook groups and this kind of stuff, but that’s all very small scale,” she said. Macdonald’s CCPA report found that 2.5 million Canadians now have almost no local news. The hardest hit areas are small towns, where the number of news outlets has declined almost across the board. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the loss has been “cataclysmic” to local print outlets, the report writes. In regions outside of St. John’s, three quarters of outlets have shut down over the last 16 years, leading to a 100 per cent drop in print outlets in those small towns. These numbers come from the CCPA’s news depreciation index, which came about due the work of the Local News Initiative project, headed by Toronto Metropolitan University professor April Lindgren. ‘Democracy happens between elections,’ says Macdonald The “bull horn” on local issues and candidates—including important investigative work—is a major loss that accompanies the decline of local media, Macdonald also said. Macdonald emphasized that “democracy happens between elections.” Local news reporters are “the ones holding to account municipal, provincial, and federal officials to say, ‘you promised us X, is it being delivered fairly?’” The PPF report points to five recommendations to address the struggling local news industry. Two of them involve increasing funding: creating a non-partisan election coverage fund and directing government advertising to local media. But Independent Senator Paula Simons, a former reporter and columnist for the Edmonton Journal, said she’s not convinced that funding can address the issue. “People have tried, with the federal funding,” she said. “But part of the problem is—what I really worry is—that people have lost the habit of consuming local news.” Senator Paula Simons, (Photo: Courtesy of Senator Paula Simons) She called the issue “chicken and egg,” noting those who removed community media from their news diet won’t realize what they’ve lost until a local issue upsets them. Even when mainstream media was in its prime, “the national narrative tended to subsume local riding issues,” Simons said. She said the problem that keeps her up at night is that people won’t know what’s going on in their communities. “How will people find out about school board elections? How will people find out about who’s running for reeve in their county?” Still, Simons said she’s not sure how to revitalize local news outlets. “I have seen many false messiahs come into newsrooms with the answer,” Simons said. “I can tell you all the things I think won’t work, but do I have an answer for what would? I do not. I wish I did.” She also emphasized that, when it comes to elections, it’s not the “information elite” who will be affected, as those people know how to find what they’re searching for. It’s the “average voter” who will suffer as they will not have access to the “easily grabbable information” that was available a decade ago. Francophone media more vulnerable to cuts, says Sen. Miville-Dechêne Progressive Senate Group Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, who is also a former CBC-Radio-Canada journalist, said francophone media is more vulnerable to local news shuttering as those outlets serve a smaller audience. “There are some small bits of regional news,” she said of local coverage in Quebec. “But I would say it’s not big networks … in English Canada.” Miville-Dechêne pointed to the cuts at the French-language outlet, TVA Nouvelles, over the past few years. The news station laid off almost one-third of its workforce—more than 500 staff—in November 2023, getting rid of in-house entertainment production, and centralizing its news production to Quebec City. The outlet trimmed another 30 jobs in May of this year. Miville-Dechêne called TVA the province’s “main private television network,” and explained that the outlet had higher ratings than Radio-Canada when it came to regional news. Now, the outlet’s regional broadcasts are all recorded and produced in Quebec City. “I find that really worrisome because I believe in competition,” said Miville-Dechêne, adding it’s not “healthy” for a free and diversified press to be without competition. Liberal MP John McKay and Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne appear before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development meeting on Sept. 26, 2022. (Photo: Andrew Meade/Hill Times Publishing) She recalled facing “strong competition” from TVA when she was a reporter, with the outlet often nearer to “the ground than we were,” making it better able to pick up local stories and issues. She said with the loss of local news, Quebec has now moved to more “talk radio.” “Everybody is doing a lot of commentary now,” she observed. “It’s really less costly than being on the ground.” But, she said, commentary tends to “over simplify stories or issues,” which leads listeners to form opinions on a “sketchy basis.” ‘Ridiculous sense of optimism’ for future of local news: Uncles The PPF report concludes that local news outlets have to “do their part” to fuel “innovative entrepreneurship” and ready themselves for support. It recommends outlets create a “network for media leadership to exchange ideas about best practices” as well as institute a standardized national training program as a “good place to begin.” Journalists should also lend “their expertise directly to citizens,” the report highlights, pointing to groups like Documenters Canada, which pays Canadians to document community public meetings, and the volunteer-run fact-checking organization, Get Fact. Finally, it points to the need for better research and data collection to “identify areas of greatest need,” as the only dataset available is the CCPA’s index. When asked if she thinks these recommendations—if taken—could revitalize local news, Uncles said she has “a bit of a ridiculous sense of optimism” about the future of journalism and local news. The future of local news could take many forms, she said, but it needs “a great entrepreneurial spirit and a real journalistic kind of prowess.” Uncles pointed to the radio station Cabin Radio in Yellowknife, N.W.T., (one of the regions studied by the report) for its thriving local news scene. “During the 2023 wildfires, they were the ones sleeping on the floor in their radio office and broadcasting 24-hours a day,” she said. “And everyone in Yellowknife was tuning into Cabin Radio. Not so much CBC, because Cabin Radio wanted it more. They were hungry.” She pointed to PPF-commissioned polling by the market research and consulting firm Ipsos, which found that local newspapers and radio were the most trusted news sources among those polled. The survey also found that 87 per cent of respondents thought local news was important to a properly-functioning democracy. “We know that people desperately need and want local news, and we know they trust it more than anything,” she said. “We have a bit of a robust set of recommendations, and it’s going to take a lot to kick-start the whole ecosystem again.” ewand@hilltimes.com This article was originally published in The Hill Times.

Candidates ‘unchallenged’ and ‘uncovered’ in federal election as a fallout of dying local media: report

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By Eleanor Wand
| August 28, 2025

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Candidates ‘unchallenged’ and ‘uncovered’ in federal election as a fallout of dying local media: report

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