Who controls Canadian media
A glimpse into who runs some of the countries bigest newpapers.
Background
Ok, this is not an exhaustive analysis by any means, but like a lot of folk, I have a news feed/aggregator that gets things from the left, from the right, and from the centre for my viewing pleasure. I have a couple of these aggregators actually. I noticed that some of the posts in it were tilting even a little more to the right than usual, so I decided to look into things.
Now I’ve already known that the National Post was right leaning, their core news is pretty centrist/right but their editorial bent has become almost Fox like. There were a couple of post from them that bordering on blaming Alex Pretti and Renee Good’s murders on themselves. And while they have always been “anti big-government”, the level of hyper-inflammatory rhetoric coming out lately seems over-the-top.
The other thing I noticed was that the Ottawa Citizen, our major daily here, seemed to be publishing a number of “letters-to-the-editor” style articles under the “You Said It” byline. Not a scientific survey by any means but they seem to pick right-wing talkers and trolls 4-to-1 over an left leaning letters. And this is in a fairly liberal city.
So I did a little research on who own’s these and other major papers in the country. I did not like what I found.
Ownership
The National Post is owned by Postmedia Network Canada Corp.. Postmedia is one of Canada’s largest newspaper chains and controls a huge slice of English-language print media in Canada, including:
🍁 National / National-Level
Major national titles
- National Post (national daily)
- Financial Post (business section of the National Post)
📍 British Columbia
Daily newspapers
- Vancouver Sun (English-language daily)
- The Province (tabloid daily)
Community / regional publications
- Postmedia also owns various smaller local papers across B.C., though specifics vary over time.
📍 Alberta
Daily newspapers
- Calgary Herald
- Edmonton Journal
Tabloid papers
- Calgary Sun
- Edmonton Sun
There are many weekly/tabloid publications in smaller Alberta towns.
📍 Saskatchewan
Daily newspaper
- Regina Leader-Post
- StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
📍 Ontario
Major dailies
- Ottawa Citizen
- London Free Press
- Kingston Whig-Standard
- Cornwall Standard Freeholder
- North Bay Nugget
- Sudbury Star
- Timmins Daily Press
- Tabloid / Sun papers
- Ottawa Sun
- Toronto Sun
There’s a large slate of smaller weekly and local titles (e.g., Brockville Recorder and Times, Simcoe Reformer, St. Thomas Times-Journal, etc.).
📍 Québec
English-language daily
- The Gazette (Montreal) — the main English daily in Québec
(Postmedia generally does not own French-language papers; Québecor and other companies dominate that market.)
📍 Atlantic Canada (Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI)
Since 2024, Postmedia acquired assets from SaltWire Network, which included many regional papers in the Atlantic provinces.
Major dailies
- The Chronicle Herald (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
- Cape Breton Post (Nova Scotia)
- The Telegram (St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador)
- Telegraph-Journal (Saint John, New Brunswick)
Other Atlantic titles SaltWire brought dozens of daily and weekly newspapers across Nova Scotia, Newfoundland & Labrador, and Prince Edward Island. These were rebranded under Postmedia after acquisition.
📍 Other Provinces / Territories
Postmedia has historically owned some smaller local outlets in places like:
- Yukon (Whitehorse Star)
- Smaller Ontario and western community papers (e.g., Sault Star)
That’s lot of major Canadian cities, maybe they don’t like Winnipeg?
Who owns Postmedia
Postmedia is publicly traded, but effective control sits with U.S. hedge funds, not Canadian families or institutions.
The key players:
Chatham Asset Management
- The dominant influence behind Postmedia
- Based in New Jersey
- Controls Postmedia primarily through debt ownership, not just shares
Postmedia Network Canada Corp.
- Trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: PNC.A / PNC.B)
- Has multiple share classes, but voting power is heavily constrained by its debt structure
Why this ownership is controversial
Critics point to:
- 🇺🇸 Foreign (U.S.) control of Canadian media
- 🧱 High market concentration (reduced competition)
- 🧭 Editorial alignment across multiple papers
- 💰 Cost-cutting pressure driven by debt servicing
Supporters argue:
- Without hedge-fund financing, many papers would’ve folded
- It preserved jobs in the short term
Is Postmedia Pro-US
The pattern we are seeing:
Heavy reuse of:
- U.S. conservative talking points
- American culture-war language
Frequent sympathetic framing of:
- U.S. Republican positions
- American foreign-policy interests
Less emphasis on:
- Canadian social-democratic traditions
- Distinctly Canadian policy framing
That’s partly ideological, but U.S. conservative content travels well online and drives a lot of clicks. And the Canadian conservative audiences overlap heavily with U.S. media ecosystems.
Hedge Fund Influence
Hedge funds do not usually dictate daily editorials
But they do:
- Appoint leadership
- Set cost structures
- Reward audience-maximizing strategies
And in today’s media market: Outrage + culture-war content = clicks + subscriptions
That systematically favors:
- Polarizing commentary
- U.S. political narratives (which already dominate online traffic)
- Conservative audiences who are more likely to pay for newspapers
So the tilt to the right is structural, not conspiratorial.
But just because it isn’t conspiratorial doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. The net result is the same, a noticeable shift to the right in our major print media outlets.
Conclusions
I am not advocating for media ownership reform or anything. Though the thought goes thru my head “at least not yet”. It depends how far these right-wing positions are pushed by the owners and editors . The National Post editorial board seems to have adopted a “anything a liberal government does is evil” position at best, and a “the American conservative movement is pretty cool” stance at worst, bordering on hate speech. If that continues to impact Canadian print media in such a fashion, I am not sure of the cure. I’ve often stated that the US political problems cannot be fixed until they address the “Fox Problem”.
In the meantime, just be aware of where you get your news, and the organizations behind it and their motives. National Post has gotten so bad that I have removed them entirely from my feeds, as their news contents is not worth the noise coming from their editorial pages.
If you insist on getting your news from the far end of either side of the spectrum, at least try to understand that’s where it’s coming from, do some critical thinking on things, and explore alternative sources once in a while. There are some pretty awful things happening in the world right now, but the ‘click-bait’ media culture we live in today doesn’t always lend itself to the truth. Be aware of that before you go too far down the rabbit hole.