A Daily newspaper with no advertising could easily cost two or three dollars to produce. It can be surprisingly labor intensive. Just having security guards at one printing plant would be five full time employees (40 hour weeks, 24 hour coverage, days off) If they didn't maintain newsbureaus in the largest cities in Canada, they would be completely dependent on the Canadian Press and would look like a small city daily and they could never compete with the Globe and Mail. Trying to be a national paper would make them a poor media buy for a local advertiser. A car dealership in Toronto probably wouldn't care of readers in Ottawa knew he existed or not.

Here in the US, the USA Today is hemorrhaging both red ink and subscribers because supermarkets here are regional and want to be focused in areas where they have stores. Half of their circulation is in hotels. The Globe and Mail has enough circulation to run regional editions.