Paul Godfrey would sell out Canadian media

Selfishly seeks to let foreigners own our Fourth Estate

By Frank Touby –

Paul Godfrey has his interests well covered, but they won’t likely help you. The former top bureaucrat of the former Metropolitan Toronto government (he was appointed, never elected to the spot) is now CEO of Postmedia, which owns National Post.

He wants to let foreigners come in and gobble up our media. What is already a huge oligopoly of corporate media such as the one Godfrey heads would get bigger.

That might serve Paul Godfrey and his corporate masters, but it’s horrible for Canadians and for small Canadian publishers.

The way the law stands today, foreign-owned publications rightly aren’t able to give the same tax deductions as Canadian-owned publications. Godfrey and Postmedia have paid a lobbyist to tout a change to the feds that would hand our sovereignty over to transnational corporations by hogtying the Fourth Estate.

Deceitfully claiming that the Internet has changed the game by posting more ads than newspapers, Godfrey argues that Ottawa should level the playing field so that multinationals could be able to own Canada’s Fourth Estate and grant Canadian tax breaks available only through Canadian-owned publishers.

Rather, were he honourable in this pursuit, Godfrey would insist that Internet advertising be subject to the same tax-break restrictions as other Canadian-owned publications. That would protect Canadian media from erosion in ownership.

Already monster foreign corporations are poised to brainwash us through our own media. Paul Godfrey is cheering them on.

He has behind him a federal government that tragically is round-heeled to demands from big business.

“The merger of corporate and government powers is called ‘fascism’.”—Economist Gerald Celente.