OTTAWA — In late 2023, Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said it was time for the federal government to redefine what the CBC does and how it does it.
A year later — and with a federal election expected sometime this spring — her office is promising the minister will unveil the planned changes to the public broadcaster's mandate in"due course." But with Parliamentary business on hold until late March due to prorogation, and opposition parties champing at the bit to trigger an election, getting any legislative changes to the CBC's mandate passed may be a long shot.
Peter Menzies, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, predicted"the CBC will find itself in the very ticklish position of reporting on an election campaign in which it is a significant feature." He called the CBC a"broken and failing propaganda machine" and said the party would"turn the CBC headquarters into beautiful homes for Canadian families."
But that message may not resonate the same way with the electorate as a whole. Jessica Johnson is a senior fellow at McGill University’s Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, which conducted survey research that found most Canadians — even Conservative voters — want to keep the CBC around. CBC/Radio-Canada’s new CEO Marie-Philippe Bouchard told a Parliamentary committee in November the two services are"clearly very interconnected." She said"all support services outside Quebec are actually provided by English services. Without that support, there is no service."
She added that"many people have criticized the corporation for the fact that, in many ways, it seems to resemble a publicly-funded commercial private broadcaster. However, that's the symptom. The cause is inadequate public funding.
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