Volume 7, Issue No. 47
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 Sunday, May 3, 2026
~ With threat to its existence growing imminent by the day, the ethnic media have reached out to Canada's top officials while condemning cutbacks in government funding which essentially discriminated them in favour of mainstream and first nations publications. The rare outburst comes amidst the discovery of a scheme perpetrated by editors of a Filipino publication on two of its writers whom they deceived for months about their salaries.
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PRESS WEEK 2026 IN TORONTO
Cutbacks in Grant Money
Threaten Ethnic Media
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
“The discontent and frustration that you feel is entirely your own creation.” ―
TORONTO - Amidst a looming threat to its existence and an unaddressed in-house mess described as "technically criminal," the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada (NEPMCC) celebrated Freedom of the Press, its local version of World Press Freedom Day, a United Nations holiday commemorated every year on the third day of May.
The non-profit organization, so-called "other voices," observed the day with a reception at Toronto City Hall on Friday, May 1, as it continues to grapple with insufficient funding from the federal government amidst a monetary controversy generated by one of its members.
Whether the unearthing of the wrongdoing had a big role in the cutbacks was never clarified by the parties directly involved, namely, NEPMCC and its top officials, and the Department of Canadian Heritage (or Canadian Heritage).
Financial support by Canadian Heritage is critical to NEPMCC since it is a designated implementor of the Local Journalism Initiative (LJI), a government information outreach for underserved communities.
What NEPMCC lacks in money, it makes up for breadth of exposure through its purported membership of over 300 ethnic newspapers serving an estimated three million people across Canada who speak a language other than the official English and French.
In this context, LJI is significant. Among the recipients of taxpayers' money allocated to LJI by NEPMCC from Canadian Heritage grant is a Filipino tabloid, the now-extinct The Philippine Reporter (TPR), the left-leaning fortnightly owned and edited by the spouses Hermie Garcia and Mila A. Garcia.
Repeated requests for comment from Canadian Heritage, NEPMCC, and the couple have been unanswered three years after journalist Michelle Chermaine Ramos, a former TPR staffer, found out that she and an intern based in Edmonton, Alberta had been duped by the Garcias of their salaries for months even though the money had been handed to TPR in one lump sum well ahead of the LJI project.
Their lies and deception were carried out not only on Ms. Ramos and the intern, but also on NEPMCC and Canadian Heritage which supposedly instigated the freezing of the writers' compensation as LJI reporters.
Portraying Canadian Heritage, a federal government agency, and NEPMCC, in a bad light is so vile as to warrant expulsion - if the group had not done so yet - of the Garcia couple from positions of responsibility and from NEPMCC itself.
Journalists are duty-bound to tell the truth and be loyal to it. What the Garcias did was exactly the opposite - they lied, they engaged in make-believe, and lied again and again until they were uncovered by one of their staffers, Ms. Ramos herself.
Full stories:
Up to this point when the parties have stonewalled, it's ambiguous if pruning funding to NEPMCC had something to do with the deception perpetrated on the two TPR writers, and the lies devised by the spouses about Canadian Heritage and NEPMCC to cover up their misdeeds.
Just how much NEPMCC is seeking from the government to shore up its finances is unknown. But for the period 2021-2025, NEPMCC received $4.2 million from Canadian Heritage.
Per the minutes of its April 13, 2026 meeting on the NEPMCC website, senior officials of Canadian Heritage and the NEPMCC will have a closed-door meeting this week (Friday, May 8), to "focus on funding matters related to various initiatives, including the Local Journalism Initiative and student internship programs under the Aids to Publishers framework."
The discussion follows NEPMCC president Thomas Saras' rejection to mediate with Canadian Heritage "unless the ministry reverses its decision to cut back aids on various projects."
The website says his daughter, Maria Saras Voutsinas, "would be meeting with the representatives of the Canadian Heritage to further negotiate for a fair deal."
Saras' disappointment at the reduction of money for Aids to Publishers by approximately $93 million has rubbed on some NEPMCC members, including Joe Volpe, publisher of the Italian daily newspaper Corriere Canadese.
"He noted that these funding cuts," the NEPMCC minutes showed, "have been implemented despite the collective contribution of ethnic media, which plays a significant and often broader role than mainstream media in serving diverse communities and addressing information gaps.
"He further emphasized that, notwithstanding this impact, mainstream media continues to receive a disproportionately higher level of government funding."
A resolution by NEPMCC's Special General Assembly dated November 10, 2025 has condemned Canadian Heritage for "unilaterally, and contrary to initial commitments to respect the legal and long-standing practice of recognizing NEPMCC’s status," thus placing the organization into an "inferior position" amounting to a denial of equality rights reserved for Canadian mainstream and first nations publications.
Canadian Heritage, the resolution stated, "is deliberately discriminating against Canadian print outlets operating in and for clientele publishing in a third language, (non-English or French)."
"Whereas," the resolution further said, "such action is not only offensive to all the ethnic communities of Canada – identified in the last Census, 2021 as consisting of 24% of the population, and growing -), it also denies them the rights to equal and equitable funding access and benefits of government cultural and linguistic programs now skewed disproportionately to mainstream Anglophone and Francophone publications." (Copyright 2026. All Rights Reserved).
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