Last week, Maclean’s — the 111-year-old news magazine, one of the most important news organizations in Canada — announced that it will, henceforth, publish monthly rather than weekly.

The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, two of the most important papers in country, have been laying off journalists or reducing payroll with buyouts.

Postmedia, Canada’s largest newspaper publisher, has cut costs dramatically by getting rid of journalists and has signalled that it intends to keep at it. Promising digital newcomers like Buzzfeed and Vice have decided to shut down their recently opened parliamentary bureaus.

It has never been as bad in the media business in this country as it is now. Talented journalists, both veterans with long memories and young people with new ideas, are being driven out of the trade to take jobs in the ever-swelling public relations sector.

This is all really bad, worse than any equivalent shrinkage in some other industry — because information is the lifeblood of our democracy. Governments and industrial interests get better all the time at sending their propagandistic messages directly to the public, thanks in part to the rise of digital media, and because the once-powerful guard dogs in mainstream media are increasingly enfeebled, defanged.

On Parliament Hill, committees that were once covered by knowledgable beat reporters now do their business in front of empty chairs. Those in the shrinking press gallery pool increasingly move together from one event to the next in a pack — so that each lean organization is covering the story of the day and not much else.

The same goes for community council meetings and court proceedings across the country. There used to be reporters at them. Now there are not. This is creating an environment where the sort of self-dealing opportunists who are never far from any accumulation of public funds are more likely to find ways to direct that money into their own pockets, or otherwise subvert the public good to private ends.

The one bright spot in the whole media landscape is the CBC, which was promised another $150 million every year in Justin Trudeau’s March budget.

I’m glad to see the CBC get an infusion of money. Our national broadcaster still gets about a quarter of the per-capita funding received by the BBC, which operates in just one time zone and one language. Some of the people fleeing the newspaper business can continue to dig for news at CBC rather than spinning for government or writing newsletters for the Lentil Marketing Board. The CBC’s parliamentary bureau has been invigorated by the money, and its coverage is improving.

MPs have not done their jobs and updated the Broadcasting Act, and the previous government pushed the CBC to generate more of its own revenue. So managers have wandered into the internet with their gimlet eyes fixed on acquiring clicks. MPs have not done their jobs and updated the Broadcasting Act, and the previous government pushed the CBC to generate more of its own revenue. So managers have wandered into the internet with their gimlet eyes fixed on acquiring clicks.

But I don’t think that CBC management, or MPs — the real bosses of the Mother Corp. — have properly calibrated the broadcaster’s mandate for the digital age.

Last month, the CBC announced that it has hired talented columnist Robyn Urback away from the National Post to set up an online “opinion vertical,” which sounds like a clearing house for hot takes.

The CBC is a creature of the Broadcasting Act, which was last updated in 1991, the same year the World Wide Web was created. In a strict reading of the act, the CBC has no business setting up an online hot-take factory, any more than it has the mandate to set up a national chain of poutine restaurants.

But MPs have not done their jobs and updated the act, and the previous government pushed the CBC to generate more of its own revenue. So managers have wandered into the internet with their gimlet eyes fixed on acquiring clicks.

In the YouTube era, fewer people are settling in to watch Peter Mansbridge deliver the news every night, and the corporation has to make itself relevent to Canadians if it wants to generate revenue and maintain public support.

So the CBC is offering clickbait. Nobody in Parliament has raised a peep about this, likely because anti-CBC Tories would just like to see it die and pro-CBC MPs in the other parties want to see it thrive.

Unlike the BBC, it sells ads on the internet and is moving aggressively to create web-only content, including opinion columns.

The CBC tells me it will pay union scale — 55 cents a word — which will immediately make it a very desirable market for opinion typists.

For those of us trying to make our livings in the independent news business, this is worrying. It may be difficult to compete for ad sales and journalism talent with a news organization funded by taxpayers.

And why should it be necessary? CBC has dramatically cut its news coverage over the years, protecting the big broadcasting operation in Toronto by cutting journalists in small markets. Now that Trudeau is giving it money, why doesn’t it spend that money doing public service journalism in underserved markets rather than trying to drive the last nail in the coffins of newspapers?

To be clear, CBC didn’t drive the first nails. There has been a massive migration of advertising to Google and Facebook and a huge influx of venture capital to unsustainable digital startups, leading to an increasingly desperate struggle for a rapidly diminishing pool of advertising.

None of that is the CBC’s fault, but it’s a big player in that battle for ads, making it harder for newspapers to find a working revenue model.

Want to sell ads or hire a columnist? CBC can outbid you. Want to erect a paywall? Why should readers pay for your product if they can get free stories from the CBC?

There is no indication that CBC managers give a passing thought to the impact their activity has on indpendent news outlets — and really, that’s not their job. That’s the job of the people who provide the broadcaster with $1 billion a year: MPs.

It’s about time they start doing it.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.