Poilievre’s pitch to defund CBC, keep French services would require change in law

By Stephanie Taylor, The Canadian Press on April 13, 2023.

OTTAWA – If Pierre Poilievre wants to “defund the CBC” while maintaining its French-language programming, he’ll have to overhaul the country’s broadcasting law in order to do it.

That’s according to the corporation, which has found itself in a back-and-forth with the Opposition leader over his pledge to cut the roughly $1-billion in taxpayer dollars it receives annually.

Past Conservative leaders have also taken aim at the Crown corporation, which receives its share of public money through Parliament when MPs vote on its federal budget.

Poilievre’s pitch to strip the CBC of its public funding is widely popular among Conservatives and earned loud cheers from the crowds who packed rooms to see him during last year’s leadership campaign.

But he has also suggested he supports Radio-Canada’s French services, and when asked for comment on how he reconciles that, his office pointed to a media interviewfrom March 22 in which he suggested maintaining support for services tailored for francophone minorities.

In another sit-down interview last July with right-wing outlet True North, Poilievre explained the only justification for having a public broadcaster is to provide content the private market does not. He argues that is not the case for CBC’s English services.

“Almost everything the CBC does can be done in the marketplace these days because of technology,” he told host Andrew Lawton.

“I would preserve a small amount for French-language minorities, linguistic minorities, because they, frankly, will not get news services provided by the market.”

He added he did not think the CBC’s English-language services on TV or online “provide anything that people can’t get from the marketplace.”

Making that happen, however, appears easier said than done.

In a statement, CBC/Radio-Canada said funding only Radio-Canada “would change the very nature of how programs and services are funded in Canada to target public money at only one language group.”

A spokesman says doing so would require the Broadcasting Act, the law outlining its mandate, to be rewritten.”

The law requires the corporation to provide programming in both French and English, and it does not give the government sway over how resources are allocated to accomplish that.

It also stipulates that the broadcaster maintain “creative and programming independence” and provide a range of both television and radio services.

“CBC/Radio-Canada is the country’s only media company that serves all Canadians, in both official languages (and eight Indigenous ones), from coast to coast to coast,” wrote corporate spokesman Leon Mar.

The corporation’s board of directors determines how the funding is spent. In 2021-22, the CBC received more than $1.2 billion in government funding, a decrease from about $1.4 billion in 2020-21.

Peter Menzies, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and former vice-chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, said reducing funding for the CBC is one thing, but prescribing how it can use the money would be difficult “unless you redo the legislation entirely.”

He said a future government could provide the broadcaster with a new mandate specifying what kind of services and on what platforms and in what languages it provides – but said that leads to the problem of “picking winners and losers.”

“I’m not sure politicians really want to go down the “¦ ‘We are going to give francophones better service with public money than we’re going to give anglophones,'” he said.

Menzies added that while he believes changes should be made to the CBC, “it’s a lot more complicated than people think.”

“Preferring one piece of it over another piece, particularly linguistically, I think that opens a door you probably don’t really want to open.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 13, 2023.

– With files from Mickey Djuric

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