Knife poised at the CBC’s throat, here’s what Canadian conservatives have to say about it

August 21, 2024

Abacus has a new public opinion poll asking again about defunding the CBC.

But this time the pollster has a new angle on Canada’s biggest culture war issue. It’s measured the intensity of “defunding” opinions by plotting data on how close “defund the CBC” is to a “third rail” issue, a provocative policy in danger of backfiring on the political party promising action.

The poll results show that a campaign promise to defund the CBC is a ballot box winner with 22 per cent of voters and a dead loser with 30%. According to Abacus, a promise to kill the CBC brings it very close to that electrified third rail and, in an observation brimming with irony, puts it in the same territory as reviving the death penalty.

An important point from the survey not underlined by the pollster is that nearly half of respondents either didn’t have an opinion or indicated they “might” vote for a party pushing the defund CBC agenda. We should keep in mind that federal voter turnout in 2021 was only 59%: not all poll respondents vote and there may be a correlation between “I don’t know” on a poll and “I don’t vote” on election day.

Nevertheless, the existence of those “maybe” defunders is good enough for Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives to stay the course. It also keeps the fundraising spigot open. Here’s a typical social media message from the Tory shadow Minister for Heritage, Rachel Thomas:

Without a doubt, defunding the CBC has long been a great fundraising hook for the Conservatives. The question the rest of us ask is whether they mean it quite so literally. 

Despite the firehose of CPC social media messaging, the Party’s latest publication of soberly-worded policy resolutions from its September 2023 convention is far more restrained on CBC bashing and even less emphatic than Erin O’Toole’s 2021 election platform (now scrubbed from the CPC website) which unambiguously promised to defund CBC English language television.

Says the new Conservative Party policy document:

The CBC/SRC is an important part of the broadcasting system in Canada. It must be a true public service broadcaster, relevant to Canadians. We will accordingly ensure the CBC/SRC:

• rationalizes any programming that overlaps or competes with private sector equivalents; 
• reduces its reliance upon government funding and subsidy; 
• reflects regional and demographic diversity of Canada in its role as a public broadcaster; 
• responds and is accountable to its audience; 
• supplies balanced and non-partisan programming. 

…We believe that control and operations of the CBC/SRC could be best accomplished through establishing distinct budgets for the operations of the internet, TV, and radio broadcast functions.

(Emphasis added)

Reading that, it sounds more like the CBC might be overdue for a regular dental check-up.

Still, Poilievre and Thomas are so personally committed in their messaging that it’s hard to see them backing down without sacrificing a great deal of political capital (in fact Thomas is so hot on the issue she refused to endorse her leader’s continuation of funding for French-language Radio-Canada).

What applies here is the expression ‘when people keep telling you who they are, believe them.’

It’s interesting to consider what small “c” conservatives think of all this. With the 2025 federal election looming, they may be expected to fall in line. 

Globe & Mail columnist Andrew Coyne and Editorial Page Editor Pat Brethour don’t need any encouragement and have already called for defunding the CBC. Coyne would of course have to find a new side-gig to replace his regular appearances on CBC’s At Issue. Brethour has suggested the $1.4 billion budget savings be turned over to Canadian content creators in the guise of subsidies.

Sean Speer’s The Hub appears to have turned from grudging supporter of public broadcasting to pronouncing time’s up on the CBC’s last chance to appease conservative critics.

The last straw was a CBC human interest story concerning a transgendered man who gave birth to a child. While many might regard such a news item as a man-bites-dog story for the modern age, for Speer it’s the provocation worthy of the CBC’s coup de grâce:

Whatever one thinks about the story it’s hard to argue that it reflects broad public interest journalism. The article itself indicates that the individual’s chance of conceiving a child was 1.8 percent. The nature of their experience—particularly in St. John’s—is even more atypical. It’s highly niche content that is neither representative of the broad-based local experience nor informative of major national or international developments for a local audience.

It didn’t have to be this way.

…The decline in local news isn’t a new issue. It’s been a slowing-moving crisis. The CBC had plenty of time to reorient itself as a key part of the government’s response to these developments. But it has chosen not to.

In a parallel universe, the public broadcaster could have reconfigured its staff and other resources beyond the 40 or so communities (which mostly comprise provincial capitals and key population centres) in which it’s currently present.

…There may be a role for public policy to support local journalism. That’s the subject of a worthy policy debate. But however one comes down on the question the CBC isn’t the answer. The CBC doesn’t do public interest local journalism anymore. It does identity politics. And that will ultimately be its downfall.

On the other hand, Rewrite blogger Peter Menzies is more interested in a mission re-boot for a public broadcaster that tacks further to the centre, stops competing with private news organizations for advertising revenue, and focuses on underserved audiences and markets. Here are some of his comments from an interview with Canadian Affairs, worth reading at full length:

FD: Poilievre has indicated he would cut $1 billion in federal subsidies from the CBC, while maintaining French and Indigenous programming. What do you make of this plan?

PM: I think [the plan] needs a lot of work. It depends how they want to define “defunding.” Right now, the CBC operates with a little under $2 billion in total revenue [and] $1.4 billion of that comes from the federal government. If you cut $1 billion [in federal funding], that leaves about $400 million. Currently, it costs about $500 million to run the French programming. So the math doesn’t work. You can’t cut a billion dollars and have much left over for French or English. 

You could [however] trim down its operations. So instead of having two radio networks in each language, you would just have one. You could get rid of what’s left of Radio Canada International, which is essentially an ethnic radio station. You could get rid of sports, etc. But [the Conservatives] need a far more precise plan. 

FD: In your opinion, what are the services that the CBC should be providing? And which of its current functions should be pared down?

PM: The CBC has the country’s most popular news-carrying website. So it’s doing that well. 

CBC Radio One is a market leader — often in first place and no worse than second — in every major population centre in the country from Halifax to Vancouver.  I think other [functions] like ICI Musique and its English equivalent are unnecessary. Private sector players like Apple Music and Spotify are already serving people with music.

You could take a good long look at merging CBC News Network and CBC over-the-air. 

But leave the French services alone, because the French market is entirely different from the English market. The [French] content is quite popular in Quebec. 

That still leaves about $400 million in television entertainment programming to discuss.

In the event you have concluded that MediaPolicy.ca endorses any of this budget cutting, I most emphatically do not. What is exciting from a policy point of view is the opportunity to reconsider what public broadcasting means to us, what we want to pay for, and whether we in fact might pay more not less.

I am not holding my breath that such a discussion will happen in an organized way prior to the next election. The government’s blue-ribbon committee is already charged with reporting to the Heritage Minister “regularly” and at some point perhaps we will know what they are telling her. In January, Pascale St-Onge said “I really want to achieve that before the next election, to make sure that our public broadcaster is (as) well-positioned as possible for the future.”

But unless the Liberal government deliberately chooses an expansive policy rethink over returning Conservative fire with its own wedge politics, the potential for thoughtful discussion will be overtaken by the rhetoric of election campaigns.

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