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It is difficult to know where to begin to deplore the process by which the federal government will decide which media organizations to subsidize and which not to. So let’s start with Unifor’s involvement.

“Unifor?” you may ask. “The flamboyantly anti-Conservative labour union?”

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Indeed. The mega-union representing 315,000 workers across the country, including a large percentage of anglophone Canadian journalists at legacy media outlets — and also autoworkers, because that totally makes sense — will nominate one of eight people to an “independent panel of experts.” The panel will decide the criteria for divvying up tax breaks adding up to some $600 million in public funding.

It is questionable of the government to ask any journalists’ union to weigh in on this — the Féderation nationale des communications (FNC), which counts many francophone journalists among its members, also gets a vote. After all, the idea here is supposed to be to help media organizations adapt to new market conditions, and these unions represent people who have every interest in riding dying business models to retirement.

But Unifor is the union that turned nakedly partisan during the 2015 election campaign, fundinglie-filled attack ads against Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and mortifying many journalist members whose credibility depends on their perceived political independence. More recently, Unifor’s executives have collectively styled themselves “Andrew Scheer’s worst nightmare,” eliciting more futile pleas from journalists to shut up.