I can’t wait to defund the CBC and sell off the headquarters for housing. Sign here to defund the CBC: https://conservative.ca/cpc/defund-the-cbc — post on Pierre Poilievre’s website on X (July 25, 2024)
By now almost everyone knows the “new” Conservative Party of Stephen Harper and Pierre Poilievre bears little resemblance to the venerable old Progressive Conservative Party of Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark and Hugh Segal. So perhaps it should come as no surprise to learn that the CBC, the national broadcaster so despised by these new Conservatives, was actually created by a Progressive Conservative government, that of prime minister R.B. Bennet, in 1932. Even so this dramatic about-face in party policy clearly raises questions: what is different now, and why is the Poilievre version of conservatism so keen to dismantle this national institution?
Ostensibly the main reason for the Poilievre Conservatives’ animosity toward the CBC is their firm belief that the corporation is a huge waste of taxpayers’ money, and totally unnecessary because the private sector can serve the purpose equally well. Of course this implies that the objectives of private broadcasters and that of the CBC are synonymous, something that is simply not the case. Even a casual glance at the CBC’s mandate, as outlined in the 1991 Broadcasting Act, should make it obvious why the private sector, with their laser-like focus on profit and preference for all things American, could not fulfil even half of this role:
… the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as the national public broadcaster, should provide radio and television services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains; … the programming provided by the Corporation should:
- be predominantly and distinctively Canadian,
- reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions,
- actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural expression,
- be in English and in French, reflecting the different needs and circumstances of each official language community, including the particular needs and circumstances of English and French linguistic minorities,
- strive to be of equivalent quality in English and French,
- contribute to shared national consciousness and identity,
- be made available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose, and
- reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.
In addition to providing a coast to coast service, with special initiatives like the Frontier Package to enhance coverage in remote areas, the national broadcaster has also delivered a bilingual coverage unequalled anywhere, the envy of countries such as Belgium and Switzerland.
This is not to suggest that there are no valid reasons to critique the efforts of the public broadcaster in recent times. Falling viewership accurately reflects the current struggles of the CBC, (notably in English, and on television rather than radio), to demonstrate the relevance of some of its programming, especially in the digital era, and in the face of American dominance of private broadcasting. Many staunch supporters of the CBC, including this author, have been among those who have roundly criticized various recent decisions as evidence of the corporation’s managerial incompetence and/or loss of vision as outlined in its mandate.
However these legitimate criticisms of the CBC’s performance have not been the focus of Conservative ire. Nor has M. Poilievre offered any constructive suggestions on how to improve the broadcaster’s performance, precisely because he is not in favour of that mandate in the first place. He is not concerned with promoting national consciousness and identity, bilingualism or multiculturalism. (At the same time, for purely cynical political reasons Poilievre is careful to exclude Radio Canada from his chopping block, ever mindful of Quebec votes, even though there is no reasonable way in which that operation could be separated out and maintained under his plan to defund.) Nor is he interested in “cultural expression” of any kind, which he considers to be the realm of the “elites” and “gatekeepers” he also despises. Put another way, he sees the CBC as a tool used by those elites to promote their values and beliefs.
As he so clearly put it in a Conservative fundraising post of April 26, 2022 on Facebook, “The gatekeeping elites will try to destroy anyone who threatens their power. I’m not backing down. Help me defund the CBC, remove the gatekeepers and give you back control of your life.” The last section of the preceding sentence is particularly revealing, since it is difficult to see — in any rational sense — how the CBC has seized control of anyone’s life. But it is a phrase that plays perfectly to the real, underlying reason for the Conservatives’ attack on the CBC, namely, that it consistently provides news and factual evidence that contradict their world view. (If, for example, you want to claim that there is currently a dramatic increase in violent crime in this country, you hardly want to see nightly coverage of experts explaining how it is actually much lower. Or experts who explain the demonstrable value of drug injection sites when you are intent on describing them as dangerous drug “dens.”)
The other upfront rational used by these Conservatives to devalue the CBC is to claim that it is partisan rather than objective. This, of course, is a move designed to diminish the credibility of any positive coverage of the actions of their Liberal opponents and also to head off any fallout from negative coverage of their own policies and/or politicians in advance. This approach was epitomized by Poilievre’s recent campaign asking (then) Twitter to describe the CBC as “government-funded.” Due to earlier outraged protests by the BBC and the American NPR over the social media giant’s decision to apply that term to describe them, Poilievre knew only too well that Twitter defines “government-funded” as “media outlets that have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.” Poilievre made it clear that he believed this to be the case for the CBC, while Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez along with a number of communications experts pointed out that the CBC in fact is an independent crown corporation like the BBC, with complete editorial independence.[i]
These attacks on the CBC are no laughing matter. As public broadcasting advocacy group FRIENDS noted, “Poilievre seems to have no qualms comparing the CBC to the likes of Russia’s Sputnik TV… These tactics are irresponsible, dangerous, and undermine the democracy that public institutions like the CBC/Radio Canada are desperately trying to uphold.”[ii]
We have seen what happens elsewhere when a populist political party starts down that road. Suppression of independent media, and promotion of social media sites as the primary source of “news”, has led to an increasingly ignorant citizenry vulnerable to capture by authoritarian populists. This has already occurred in former democracies such as Hungary. And it is becoming a serious concern even in the United States, where Donald Trump’s refusal to deal with mainstream media in favour of the discredited Fox News, and the creation of his own Truth Social website when even the former Twitter disowned him, are classic examples. Fox News is now the primary source of television “news” for the vast majority of Republicans, while social media are sometimes or often the primary source of news for more than 60% of Americans. [iii]
As an earlier post (“The Growing Threat of Civic Illiteracy”, March 3, 2024) has outlined howthe inability of citizens to detect fake news, and their vulnerability to disinformation generally, is causing western democracies everywhere to be concerned. One response to this concern has been an initiative by the CBC, Belgian, Swiss and German public broadcasters to join forces in an effort to regain public trust. [iv] In the Canadian context, another response has been the Liberal government’s appointment of an advisory panel to “provide policy advice on how to strengthen and renew the public broadcaster so it can continue to fulfill its important social, cultural and democratic functions.” [v] While many informed observers have enthusiastically supported this latest initiative, there is also serious concern that it may already be too late to implement any substantive changes before a Conservative government is potentially elected and will move swiftly to dismantle the organization. Given the vital role that credible media play in a healthy, dynamic democracy, this is a race against time that may have huge significance for Canadians.
[i] https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/conservatives-ask-twitter-to-label-cbc-accounts-as-government-funded-media-1.6352342
[ii] https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/conservatives-ask-twitter-to-label-cbc-accounts-as-government-funded-media-1.6352342
[iii] https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/news-platform-fact-sheet/; https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/social-media-and-news-fact-sheet/; and https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/04/unique-damaging-role-fox-news-plays-american-media/
[iv] https://www.cbc.ca/mediacentre/press-release/public-broadcasters-collaborate-to-reclaim-online-public-spaces-with-creati
[v] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/liberals-cbc-advisory-panel-may-be-too-late
