Dear editor:

I’m trying not to vote for Pierre Poilievre, but when small-l liberals express views like the ones in The Lake Report’s editorial, it’s hard not to, (“Poilievre is truly great — at pandering,” Aug. 15).

Because, you see, only liberals are the arbiters of truth.

They couldn’t be wrong and the Online News Act couldn’t be immoral, a law literally designed to force companies to pay Canadian media for the crime of, what? What egregious sin have they committed? Increasing the reach of Canadian media exponentially for free — the horror.

Elon Musk alone is owed a debt of gratitude by The Lake Report for the dissemination of its editorial on X to millions of people who normally wouldn’t have read it or heard about our little town.

But, like most things in Canada, our government lets no good deed go unpunished. And while The Lake Report has the temerity to blame Meta for standing up to a government bully because it won’t be coerced without a fight, I commend Meta.

You’d think that all hope is lost for Canadian media in today’s technological age, but the editorial — completely objective, of course — also conveniently leaves out the simple and effective free market solution to this “problem:” paywalls.

Finally, while the federal act might not be “a censorship law, full stop,” the outcome of the government’s intervention naturally leads to censorship.

By forcing Meta’s hand, the Liberals have restricted Meta users from seeing Canadian media because to do so would lead to the government violating Meta’s shareholder’s rights. So, yes, while not technically a censorship law the outcome is the same.

The Local Journalism Initiative, well, Canadian media outlets are struggling, and you must help, they must be subsidized. This is the rational viewpoint, don’t you know?

A rational person couldn’t believe, as I do, that government shouldn’t subsidize any industry, especially journalism. Because maybe, we worry about incentives. We worry that the government inserting itself into the economy will lead to negative, unintended consequences.

I think what motivated me most to write this letter is the word contained in the editorial’s headline — “pandering.”

While I’m sure Poilievre is great at pandering, he’s a politician. Let’s not pretend liberal media isn’t great at it as well.

What makes liberal media worse than Pierre are their claims to hold the moral high ground. Fortunately, people are starting to wake up to the fact they don’t.

Alexander Evans
Virgil