Jackson made an interesting discovery about one of Vancouver’s three free dailies, 24 Hours. He tried to access a story from December 27, 2005, and was presented with this page:
The story you are searching for is available in its entirety via email, fax or mail for $10.00, payable with credit card (include expiry date).
Ten bucks? For a week-old article in a shoddy local daily? A slightly more esteemed paper, the New York Times, charges about CAN $5 a story. I imagine the demand for old 24 Hours articles is near zero, but that’s still a shameful cash grab.
As for the other dailies, I had a hard time determining Dose’s archive policy. I only found articles as old as November, 2005. Maybe they just dump older stuff? Metro is equally ambiguous after a quick search.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
I don’t think it’s a cash grab. From the sound of it, requests for articles have to be processed manually. Then there’s the payment processing and overhead. It all adds up.
RE: Dose — you can download PDF issues of Dose all the way back to April 4, 2005, by clicking “Download DOSE” and then clicking on “Archives” (Vancouver’s, for example, is at http://toronto.dose.ca/webx/Uploads/vancouver/ ). Not the same as having searchable HTML archives but at least they’re all there and all still free.