Volume 7, Issue No. 44
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . . .
Our latest as of Monday, April 6, 2026
~ A federal agency, a non-profit media organization, and the owners of a disappeared Filipino tabloid are apparently in the grip of a deafening silence nearly three years after a Toronto-based journalist unraveled the editors' duplicity in implementing the government's journalism initiative for underserved communities.
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THE MONEY SCANDAL THAT WON'T DIE
Canadian Heritage, NEPMCC,
TPR in Grip of Silence
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
"He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second time." ― Thomas Jefferson
TORONTO - Exactly two months ago today, April 6, the Department of Canadian Heritage (aka Canadian Heritage) reacted quickly to a list of queries about its information project aimed at underserved communities in the Greater Toronto Area.
"We will respond to your enquiry as promptly as possible," its Media Relations unit wrote back within minutes of receiving seven questions seeking clarity to funding the federal government's Local Journalism Initiative (LJI).
That was all, swift but shallow and unsubstantial. Of course, the reply was auto-generated, but the acknowledgement guarantees the questions would reach responsible officials in Canadian Heritage, if not the higher echelons of leadership. After all, the questions involved public money.
LJI is being implemented by the non-profit National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada (NEPMCC) through at least four dozen of its members, among them The Philippine Reporter (TPR), the left-leaning tabloid that seemed to have bowed out of existence as of April 2024.
Public interest in LJI and TPR's role in carrying out the mandate of Canadian Heritage has been stoked by misrepresentations foisted by TPR editors Hermie Garcia and Mila A. Garcia on two of their writers.
For months, the husband and wife duo had declared that Canadian Heritage had been freezing salaries of LJI-accredited reporters Michelle Chermaine Ramos, a TPR staff writer, and a TPR intern based in Edmonton, Alberta, for reasons the editors themselves had concocted. (Related video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTJc42WrFRQ).
Both writers have resigned from TPR once the editors' lies and deceptions were uncovered in early 2023. Their LJI slots were instantly filled with three writers, two of whom are apparently newbies recruited from a local university, or TPR's grant money would be compromised.
Funds for LJI are taxpayers' money disbursed by Canadian Heritage to outlets like NEPMCC, its implementing arm. In turn, NEPMCC allocates the money to participating media, and in this particular case, TPR, which then pays Ms. Ramos and the intern for their LJI reporting.
(Related story: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/11/100million-fund-fuels-row-between.html).
Outside of her usual coverage for TPR, Ms. Ramos continued writing stories for LJI. In fact, for an eight-month period in 2022, she had produced a total of 37 articles published in TPR.
Everything went well for sometime until Ms. Ramos, already fed up for inordinate delays in receiving compensation for her work, asked NEPMCC why TPR was not paying her on time.
That's when the whole facade of propriety erected by the Garcias crumbled. It was not that Canadian Heritage was delinquent, and neither was NEPMCC. The fault was in the couple.
The truth - unbeknownst at that time to Ms. Ramos and the intern - was that the full amount for LJI reporters' salaries had been released by NEPMCC ahead of time to Hermie Garcia.
(Related story: Lies, Deceptions by The Philippine Reporter Exposed).
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It became obvious then that Hermie Garcia and Mila A. Garcia had been lying all along. Were they intent on scamming Ms. Ramos and the intern? Or did they use the money for other purposes, personal or otherwise, and hid it?
Their barefaced lies, the obfuscation, the passing of blame to Canadian Heritage and NEPMCC to shield themselves from accountability had prompted a top NEPMCC official to describe the Garcias' conduct as "technically criminal."
(Related story: NEPMCC Official Condemns Lies by TPR Editors).
I asked Canadian Heritage if it has chosen to ignore Ms. Ramos' complaint against the Garcia couple, and to this day, two months later, our inquiries were met with silence.
It's not clear if Canadian Heritage and/or NEPMCC attempted to investigate them inasmuch as taxpayers' money, the people's money, was endowed to a venture that smacks of a scandal in high places.
Though TPR has apparently vanished, the names of the Garcia couple and a coterie of alleged writers are very much in the list of NEPMCC members representing TPR.
To me, it suggests that the Garcias are still in the good graces of NEPMCC notwithstanding the seeming indictment that what they did to Ms. Ramos and the intern were "technically criminal." (Copyright 2026. All Rights Reserved).
