Province supports American tech elites for buy local advertising campaign
The provincial government announced last week it was launching an advertising campaign to encourage Manitobans to “buy local” in the wake of U.S. president Donald Trump’s threatened tariff war against Canada and annexation of the country.
Manitoba premier Wab Kinew added his voice to a chorus of Canadian premiers and prime minister Justin Trudeau’s buy Canadian messaging.
Yet the province is using taxpayers’ dollars to pay for part of its buy local advertising campaign to appear on American social media sites, thereby supporting tech elites like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, a multi-billionaire who has aligned himself with Trump and announced in January he’s ending fact-checking, a move that has critics concerned about the intensification of hate speech and misinformation on Zuckerberg’s platforms.
American tariffs against all Canadian products – and Canada’s countervailing tariffs – are currently on hold until March 4 or thereabouts. Trump had signed an executive order on Feb. 1 imposing a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian products sent to the U.S. and a 10 per cent tariff on Canadian energy. The tariffs were slated to begin on Feb. 4, but Trump put them on hold, allegedly in response to American markets taking a tumble.
With the U.S. having become an unstable trading partner in the span of three weeks since Trump became president, and with Trump’s economically damaging tariffs seen as a precursor to the annexation of Canada – Trump said he’d use “economic force” to make Canada America’s 51st state and Trudeau said Trump’s annexation threat is “real” – Canadian political leaders, businesses and everyday Canadians have risen united against the existential threat from the south.
With the U.S. seemingly on a trajectory to autocracy and Trump on Day 18 (on Feb. 6 ) of his “coup d’etat,” according to American documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, the scene down south is giving Canadians considerable pause for thought as to what products they should be spending their money on and what e-commerce platforms they should be supporting.
With a nudge from various Canadian premiers, the federal government and some opposition parties, Canadians have embarked on a mission to buy Canadian-made products over U.S. goods in order to insulate Canada’s economy and jobs from the crater-sized blows tariffs will surely wrought. Tariffs will drive up the cost of food, fuel and other products and services, and hurt both American and Canadian consumers.
That’s why Kinew is encouraging Manitobans to focus on buying local products and supporting local businesses. The new advertising campaign called “Support Manitoba. Buy Local” was launched on Feb. 5, and an accompanying news release says it will appear on “digital platforms” then expand to radio and billboards.
“Manitobans are united in their resolve to support each other and how we as consumers chose to spend our money can make a big impact,” said the premier. “These past few weeks have made it clear that we need to diversify our economy and trading partners and buying Manitoban or Canadian will help create strong businesses and jobs here in Manitoba.”
The news release doesn’t mention advertising in local print media, which serves small and rural communities across Manitoba, and does not state how much money the campaign will cost nor how long it will last.
The Canadian Press reported last week that Kinew wouldn’t directly answer questions about whether some of the purported $140,000 for the purportedly four-week advertising campaign would be spent on “non-local media platforms such as Facebook,” but that ads were “popping up on Facebook and Instagram.”
Community newspapers are local businesses that employ Canadians, support democratic inquiry and debate rather than promote hatred and discrimination, provide sponsorship or in-kind support to rural community events and act as advertising conduits to help drive dollars to local businesses.
A spokesperson for AdCanada Media, an agency that places ads in over 900 newspapers across Canada, told the Express Weekly News that as of Feb. 7, it had no “bookings” last week – and none for this week – from the Manitoba government for its buy local advertising campaign.
There were 49 print titles in Manitoba in 2023, according to AdCanada. Manitoba’s titles include the Express Weekly News and its five sister papers (the Stonewall Teulon Tribune, Selkirk Record, Winkler Morden Voice, Altona Morris Voice and the Camran Dufferin Standard reaching about 132,000 readers weekly), along with other community newspapers, the First Nations Voice, and cultural newspapers including the Icelandic Logberg-Heimskringla and French La Liberte.
The Express asked the province why print media was excluded from its buy local advertising campaign, what digital platforms the province is using for the campaign and how much money the province is spending. The province acknowledged receiving the questions but did not provide answers.
With the Trump administration’s threat to take down American public broadcasting, Trump’s well-known disdain for fact-checking, liberal media outlets and his close alignment with billionaire tech bros, the Manitoba government’s decision to support Meta, which also owns Instagram and other platforms, over Manitoba community newspapers is being questioned by some critics.
Factor in the years of American tech giants such as Meta and Google siphoning away advertising dollars that might have gone to local news outlets, and their recalcitrant attitude to compensating Canadian broadcasters and local print newspaper outlets for using their news stories as bait to bring advertisers and users to them, the decision by the province to overlook community newspapers is troubling.
Interlake-Gimli MLA Derek Johnson said he’s disappointed the province is financially supporting American social media over Manitoba newspapers in light of the tariff threat from the U.S.
“I’m absolutely disappointed that our provincial government is spending money on American-owned social media sites to promote local shopping in response to potential Trump tariffs. It just doesn’t sit right with me. We should be keeping our dollars here in Manitoba and Canada, supporting our own businesses and platforms that actually benefit our communities,” said Johnson in a statement to the Express.
“I am concerned that these advertising dollars are not being spent on local media. These local papers are vital; they keep our communities connected and give local businesses a voice. We need to put our money where it counts, supporting our local media and making sure our community gets the spotlight it deserves. The NDP say that they want to create a committee to look into supporting local media but when given the opportunity to do something tangible, they send Manitoban money to the U.S.”
Nearly two-thirds of Canadians (65 per cent) want Canada’s federal government to commit a percentage of its advertising budget to Canadian news media, according to a survey conducted in December 2024 and January 2025 by Totum Research on behalf of News Media Canada.
The federal government used to advertise on Meta but put a hold on that in 2023 after the social media company blocked all news on its platforms in Canada rather than compensate Canadian media outlets for using their content. The federal government, however, lifted its boycott on Meta last week.
“The Government of Canada’s decision to resume advertising with Meta is a real kick in the shins to independent publishers across Canada,” said News Media Canada chair Dave Adsett in a Feb. 6 release on CommunityWire. “Disinformation travels faster than the truth, and it sends the wrong signal to local advertisers when the government is rewarding a company that is unwilling to fact-check information on its own platforms.”
The Express reached out to the federal government, asking if it will commit to supporting Canadian news media, including rural print newspapers, and whether it has made any decision as yet – something promised recently by the government in response to Trump’s tariffs – about changing its procurement policies, which can include advertising. The government acknowledged the questions but did not provide answers.
Media plays an “outsized” role in Canadian democracy according to a report titled, “The lost estate: how to put the local back in local news,” which was released Feb. 12 by the Public Policy Forum, Rideau Hall Foundation and the Michener Awards Foundation.
The report highlights a crisis in local news in Canada after decades of news outlet closures and lost revenues, and recommends rebuilding local news and small community outlets. Contributing to the crisis are the failure of non-local, corporate ownership models and the collapse of traditional advertising revenues.
“Local news is an undervalued player in the media ecosystem,” said Public Policy Forum president and CEO Inez Jabalpurwala in a news release. “It helps create civic spaces that are needed now more than ever, while also underpinning the very foundation of healthy democracies.”
The report includes an Ipsos poll that was commissioned by the report’s authors and conducted last month. The poll found 87 per cent of Canadians believe local news is “important to a well-functioning democracy.”
Respondents agreed on a range of serious implications as local news diminishes, including less knowledge about local government, schools and hospitals (61 per cent), fewer ties to the community and decreased participation in local events (57 per cent), a loss of a sense of caring for each other (54 per cent), and less demand for local small businesses (36 per cent), states the release.
Some ways to preserve local media include tax credits for local businesses that spend advertising dollars with locally owned, independent media, the allocation of a portion of government advertising dollars to local publishers and broadcasters, and the encouragement of community foundations to provide funding support for reporters in local newsrooms on a short-term basis, states the release.
Note: On his way to the Super Bowl on Feb. 9, Trump said he would be imposing 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, starting Feb 10.
