Bell Media has laid off 20 workers represented by Unifor, including journalists and support staff at newsrooms across Canada.
The union says 11 of the affected workers are journalists. That includes five recently unionized members at CTV National News in Toronto, along with journalists based in North Bay, Ontario, Halifax, Edmonton and Calgary. Other layoffs hit traffic coordinators, schedulers and promotional staff in Toronto.
Unifor National President Lana Payne said the cuts are another blow to Canadian newsrooms.
“This is a critical moment to support Canadian jobs and Canadian journalists—especially when democracy itself is under attack,” Payne said.
She added that fewer newsroom jobs mean fewer Canadian stories are covered and fewer facts are checked.
“These cuts strike at the heart of Canadian journalism,” Payne said. “When journalism is weakened, democracy is weakened—and Canadians are the ones who pay the price.”
The latest layoffs follow earlier job cuts at Bell. In 2024, Unifor launched its ‘Shame on Bell’ campaign after parent BCE cut about 4,800 jobs, including 800 unionized positions. Bell Media later announced another round of restructuring in June, laying off nearly 50 more unionized media workers.
Bell Media confirmed in a statement to The Canadian Press that there were 60 job cuts total; none of the roles cut were related to newsgathering or reporting. The jobs cut were corporate related and a “continuation of changes that began last November,” said Bell Media.
What happens when the press spends decades as a mouth piece for one political party, fails to keep up with changing technology and tastes and finally agrees to humiliating payoffs in exchange for LPC party approved “news” coverage.
The end was inevitable.