Mainstream media - refusing to publish the most newsworthy story in Canada in years

Canada’s entire mainstream media is predominantly owned by the wealthy who dictate what can be published. They give naive Canadians (like me ten years ago) the wrong impression that they are responsibly covering every topic that is newsworthy and impactful to the Canadian public. Is there a more newsworthy, impactful story than:

CPP’s $500 billion surplus can help millions of struggling Canadians

Because CPP Investments has been the best pension fund investor in the world for 15 years, our CPP fund now has a $500 billion surplus. Based on standard pension practice, much of this surplus should be distributed. A no-risk $200 billion surplus distribution would give 20 million Canadians $10,000 each, on average. It would also lead to considerable improvements in Canada’s GDP, productivity, employment, business profits, poverty, income inequality, charitable donations and deficit.

A recent study indicates 43% of Canadians are within $200 of insolvency. A deserved $10,000 payment would be life-changing for them. 

Because CPP Investments has many advantages over the average investor, they will likely continue achieving their outstanding 10% return, instead of the return needed to fund their pension - 6%. If so, a 25-year-old Canadian will deserve a $100,000 CPP pension, in 2026 dollars. This means young Canadians can reduce investing for retirement, ignore life insurance (because the CPP gives a 60% survivor’s pension) and refuse contributing to other pension plans.

With as much as 15% more income available and news of a secure retirement, young Canadians can improve their quality of life today and shed their current anxiety about a retirement in poverty.

However, if younger Canadians fully understand these truths, profits for Canada’s financial industry and employment for actuaries will plummet.  

I logically thought that the bar for publication was this: If the story will attract more eyeballs and hence sell more newspapers, the story will run and the publication will then earn more profit.

How naive I was. I recall thinking my writing skill was inferior and, if I took great care, the story of the CPP’s huge surplus would soon reach Canadians. I remember carefully fine-tuning 100 drafts and finally submitting the story of the CPP’s surplus to The Star as a guest writer.

No matter how well the story was written, it was not going to be published. For ten years, there was a mainstream veto on any story about the CPP’s surplus, not just at The Star but across Canada, including “our” CBC. Two journalists who pushed for a story on the CPP’s surplus lost their jobs.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland should know about the media industry. At one time, she was Managing Director at Reuters, Deputy Editor at The Globe and Mail, and reported for The Financial Times, The Economist and The Washington Post. She explains why the Canadian media has published nothing on the CPP’s surplus in her book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. The book describes how

“the super-rich have bankrolled a network of conservative think tanks, elite journals and mass media outlets to dominate the debate over economic policy.”

She implies the selfish, wealthy owners of the Canadian media are selectively publishing what is to their advantage, not what is newsworthy.

One Globe and Mail journalist, when I suggested the wealthiest 1% are preventing news that would benefit the 99% from reaching Canadians, responded,

“I do not disagree with you at all. It was challenging working within the confines of mainstream media, and I tried to push as hard as I could to cover stories that are important to 99% of Canadians (and not the wealthy 1%) but parochial, short-term thinking and market-driven journalism often thwarted my attempts.”

The media industry in Canada has been decimated with layoffs. If a journalist wants to keep his job, he will turn a blind eye to media manipulation by the wealthy.

It finally took a respected international publication, The Economist, to write:

“Canada’s vast pension fund is gaining even more financial clout. The fund’s portfolio size has more than tripled over the past decade and is going to become only more gigantic.”

And since those words were published in January 2019, the fund has increased by another $400 billion.

Award-winning John Miller was a Professor of Journalism at Ryerson University (now TMU) for 23 years. For 10 years he was Chair of the School of Journalism, Canada’s top-ranked journalism school. Before Ryerson, he was managing editor at The Toronto Star. He feels the current Canadian media is

“cannibalistic...They’re chewing away bone marrow of their own properties in order to make them a profit, so the whole public service aspect of journalism has sort of taken a back seat…the overall quality of journalism has been lost.” 

Marc Edge is a Canadian journalist, academic and author. He recently stated

“Media are being financialized and bought up largely by hedge funds, which are only interested in making a profit. They don’t really care too much about journalism. It’s just a means to an end, and that end, of course, is making money, As a result, journalism is being squeezed for every possible dollar of profit.”

In a moment of candour, on Sept. 8, 2022, Globe and Mail journalist, Lawrence Martin, wrote “The online world is skewing social political patterns and thwarting democracy”. In the article, he stated:

“The crisis in our information complex is glaring, but it isn't being addressed. Mainstream media, while demanding transparency everywhere else, rarely applies this standard to itself. Despite its exponential growth in importance, the media industry gets only a small fraction of the scrutiny that other powerful institutions do.

Big issues go largely unexamined in Canadian media. We rarely take a look at the unfettered rise of media ownership monopolies. There is no overarching media institute to address the problems.”

Few Canadians realize our Canadian media is completely owned by a few complicit companies. An independent publication, The Maple, is dedicated to publishing the truth. In a story titled “A Guide To The Ruling Class’s Domination And Destruction Of Canadian Media” they state

“News coverage and the opinion journalism of the largest newspapers in Canada has now been weaponized and monetized by the owners.”

In unbiased media coverage, Canada is inferior to the US

US media companies like FOX, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times and 60 Minutes are highly diverse in opinion. Before the arrival of Donald Trump in 2024, they each cover whatever they want, eager to increase their readership. There is no veto on certain topics like the Canadian media’s veto on covering the CPP’s surplus and potential. (While Trump’s control of the media in 2025 is blatant and clumsy, the financial industry’s control of the Canadian media is subtle and under-the-radar.)

For example, in 2011, CBS News’ popular program, Sixty Minutes, published a story that showed how several US politicians had made millions of dollars by buying stock just before favourable legislation was passed. This story led to the STOCK Act, which vetoed such unethical behaviour.

The impact on Canadians of this news void in Canada is colossal. If the news of the CPP’s surplus and potential were published, Canadians would demand the benefits that CPP reform could give them. The resultant pressure on politicians to legislate would be enormous.

How Does the Media Industry Sustain Itself?

The reality is that much of the traditional media business is under significant financial pressure. As Chrystia Freeland noted in her book Plutocrats:

“The publisher of the Financial Times once remarked ruefully that in a very good year the media group’s entire profit was equal to one midlevel Wall Street trader’s bonus.”

Consider the experience of the Toronto Star and its parent, Torstar Corporation. In 2019, Torstar reported losses close to $50 million. Despite the losses, The Star was purchased for $60 million in 2020. Did the new owners experience another $50 million loss in the following year? Or did they agree to veto coverage of the CPP’s surplus in exchange for a considerable “donation” from the financial industry?

Ensuring that Canadians are fully informed about major public institutions like the CPP ultimately depends on open, well-resourced, and independent media.

Even “our” CBC has betrayed Canadians

Canadians each pay roughly $40 per year for “our” CBC. In return, we understandably trust the CBC to give us the news that all privately controlled media members refuse to cover.

The CBC answers only to one individual - our Prime Minister, who has obviously told the CBC to impose a total blackout on any mention of the CPP’s surplus and potential.

Based on their mandate, the CBC should be jubilantly notifying Canadians regarding the positive benefits available from the CPP’s $500 billion surplus. And they should be embarassing politicians into legislating the CPP reform that could bring immense benefits to millions of struggling Canadians. The evidence is overwhelming - The CBC has abandoned Canadians based on instructions from our Prime Minister.

What about Canada’s Charter or Rights and Freedoms? Here is the relevant information:

Chapter: Section 2(b) — Freedom of Expression and Democratic Accountability

Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees:

“freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.”

The Supreme Court of Canada has consistently interpreted this protection broadly.

Freedom of expression serves three core democratic purposes:

1. The search for truth

2. Participation in political decision-making

3. Individual self-fulfillment

When information relevant to major public policy decisions is materially obscured, delayed, or systematically underreported, democratic participation is weakened.

How has CBC defended their inaction on this story? Here is what the Basem Boshra, CBC’s Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust emailed me.

“I concur that the CPP surplus is a subject of public interest, and providing Canadians with coverage of such matters is a part of our mandate…CBC News teams across Canada devote all of their time, energy and resources to telling countless stories of great public interest to Canadians, navigating an exceptional amount of news and other similarly worthy topics in the process.”

He is essentially saying that, because there are so many stories to cover, the story of the CPP’s surplus and potential is not newsworthy enough. Recently, the CBC covered a story on a researcher studying dinosaur vomit. The CBC is telling us that this story is more important than the CPP’s $500 billion surplus and potential.

Mr. Poilievre’s desire to “Defund the CBC” is 100% justified. Without editorial independence, the CBC could also be giving Canadians a biased positive view of Prime Minister Carney and a biased negative view of Mr. Poilievre.

On March 10, 2026, former CBC journalist Travis Dhanraj appeared before a parliamentary committee regarding the state of journalism and media in Canada. He said that when he raised concerns with the CBC about editorial control and newsroom practices, he faced disciplinary action and eventually left the organization. He recommended parliament investigate whether contacts between the Prime Minister’s Office and CBC management influenced editorial decisions.

How the media betrayed the most honest politician in Canada

As described in detail here, Premier Smith refuses to remain silent regarding the CPP’s surplus and potential. She hired Lifeworks, an actuarial firm, to estimate Alberta’s fair share of the fund. Because the cover-up was unraveling, Lifeworks irresponsibly estimated Alberta deserved 53% of the fund. Then Canada’s mainstream media portrayed Premier Smith, not Lifeworks, as un-Canadian, unhinged and uncooperative.

Based on Town Hall Meetings in Alberta, many Albertans are aware of these deceptive efforts, want their deserved share of the surplus, resent Ottawa’s control and want to separate as shown here.