Melanie Joly, who has served as the Trudeau government’s Minister of Canadian Heritage since the 2016 federal election, has been replaced by fellow Montreal M.P. Pablo Rodriguez.
As columnist Graeme Hamilton writes in the National Post: “Joly leaves with many of her projects still works in progress.” For example, she had announced a review of the federal Broadcasting Act and was the minister responsible for overseeing this year’s budget funding to support local news.
As noted in the Globe and Mail: “when Joly launched her review in April, 2016, she proclaimed that ‘everything was on the table,’ creating both anxiety and expectations in the cultural community. It seemed a government was finally going to address Canada’s outdated cultural rules, including broadcasting regulations that seemed completely inadequate in the world of Google, YouTube and Netflix.”
In the wake of these changes, News Media Canada will continue its work to inform the federal government of the needs of Canada’s newspapers, and their vital place in Canadian democracy.
