Friends of Canadian Media founder Ian Morrison
January 14, 2025
The new CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard is now two weeks into the weirdest job in Canada.
The CBC is either due for its biggest make-over in its 90 year history or, if Pierre Poilievre becomes Prime Minister, annihilation.
No pressure.
The other weird thing about becoming the CBC/Radio Canada boss in 2025 is that the Heritage Minister who hired Bouchard was expected to announce something very important, rumour had it that it was legislation to update the CBC mandate in section 3(1) of the Broadcasting Act. With Parliament prorogued and the Liberal government about to fall, it now seems that whatever the Heritage Minister was planning to say about the future of the CBC will be an election promise.
But it’s our CBC, not the Heritage Minister’s and not Mr. Poilievre’s. Let the public discussion continue.
MediaPolicy has published interviews or guest columns from three public broadcasting experts and here we add a fourth, from the founder of Friends of Canadian Media, Ian Morrison.
Morrison was the chief spokesperson for the advocacy group he started up in 1985 (launched in response to the Mulroney government’s CBC budget cuts) until he retired in 2018. As the voice of a citizen’s group, not a guild or broadcaster association, Friends became and remains the nation’s muse for cultural sovereignty and prominence.
Morrison weighs in here with this open letter to the new CBC/RC president:
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Memo to: Marie-Phillipe Bouchard, President & CEO, CBC/Radio-Canada
From: Ian Morrison, Founder, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
As you assume your new responsibilities as Canada’s most important cultural leader, I want to offer some advice and suggestions for your consideration:
- Valued Institution: Despite facing criticism from various directions, CBC/RC remains a popular and valued institution. Numerous polls in recent years have shown that a strong majority of Canadians – including Conservative voters – appreciate your services and support their continuation. For example:
- Historic Legacy: The institution you lead has a long and substantial record of service that Canadians value and rely upon. This dates back to the dawn of the audio-visual era when Conservative Prime Minister R.B. Bennett created the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Act (1932) to provide Canadian radio programming amid the influx of US-based content. Liberal Prime Minister Mackenzie King furthered this legacy by establishing the CBC/RC in 1936.
- Modern Mandate: Your current governing document, the Broadcasting Act (1991), continues this mission, adapting it to the anticipated digital age under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney – focusing on values, rather than technologies. The Act provides you with a broad mandate to “inform, enlighten, and entertain.” The mandate places these verbs, in both official languages, in order of importance rather than alphabetically, guiding your decisions. Additionally, the Act mandates programming in English, French, and Indigenous languages.
- Challenges and Criticism: Canadians face an avalanche of digital content, making it challenging to receive enough domestic content to maintain a cohesive culture across the northern half of the North American continent. Media organizations struggle to stay relevant while meeting their obligations under the Act. CBC/RC is not immune to this challenge and faces criticism of unfair competition from other broadcasters, including allegations of excessive bureaucracy. Address these issues head-on.
- Digital Transformation: Embrace ‘digital first’ as more than just a slogan. Lead demographic change within CBC/RC’s personnel to truly embody this transformation.
- Partnerships and Collaboration: Transform CBC/RC’s relationships with other media and cultural organizations by creating partnerships and fostering collaboration. This will require reducing dependency on television advertising and encouraging other broadcasters to use CBC/RC-generated content without charge but with visible and audio credit. Transform your relationships into partnerships with organizations like the Canadian Press, Library and Archives Canada, NFB, Canadian Museum of Human Rights, and the National Arts Centre. The BBC’s relationship with Cultural Britain serves as a good example.
- Local Roots and Relevance: CBC/RC’s local roots are a prime asset. You should enhance collaboration among them to increase CBC/RC’s relevance to Canadians. Research shows that local news is a priority for a majority of Canadians. CBC/RC has unique Canada-wide presence and networks of local news operations in both official languages across the land.
- Educational Role: Position CBC/RC as a ‘learning’ organization. This includes direct action and fostering collaboration with learning institutions across the country. Provide a non-partisan link between constituents and MPs. Serve as an ‘agora’ where Canadians learn about each other, from each other, and as a pan-Canadian technology incubator.
- Cultural Hub: Reach out to institutions like the Nova Scotia College of Art, Concordia University, l’Institut national de l’image et du son, OCAD University, the Emily Carr School of Art, the Banff Centre, and others to create a pan-Canadian arts and culture hub.
- Successful Models: Learn from existing models of collaboration, such as the partnership between Hockey Night in Canada and Rogers Communications. Study and learn from the strategies of other national public broadcasters in OECD countries like NHK, BBC, and German public broadcasters. We are not alone. We are just nearer to the huge broadcasting organizations of a country of 335 million people to our south. Our proximity may lead us sometimes to forget that it is they, rather than we that are a broadcasting outlier in the democratic (OECD) world!
I wish you well in your new role!
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