Heritage minister pitches CBC/Radio-Canada overhaul and a major funding hike
CBC
Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge announced Thursday the government's plan to overhaul CBC/Radio-Canada to shore up an institution she said is "at a critical crossroads" but one that is necessary as the country faces American threats to its sovereignty.
While pitching a program that is unlikely to be enacted by the current government given the likelihood of a federal election sometime soon, St-Onge said American "billionaire tech oligarchs" are tightening their grip on the flow of information and Canada needs to revive its nearly century-old public broadcaster to "tell our own stories," saying it's a "national security issue" that so much of what Canadians consume is generated elsewhere.
"More than ever it's important to rely on our own sources of information — made by and for Canadians," she said.
"CBC will never be controlled by Musk or Zuckerberg. It will never belong to billionaire tech oligarchs. It will always belong to the people of Canada," she said, referencing Elon Musk, the owner of social media platform X and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.
"It's not a Liberal or a Conservative issue. It's a commitment to ourselves, our culture and our independence," she added, saying the CBC was first formed in 1936 to give Canadians a homegrown source for news and entertainment when much of that content was American.
To improve the quality of the corporation's programming in both English and French, boost the availability of "trustworthy, local and impartial news" and make the broadcaster a more reliable source of information during emergencies, St-Onge is pitching a funding increase that could nearly double its yearly appropriation.
She said per capita funding for CBC/Radio-Canada is about $33.66, the second lowest in the developed world ahead of only the U.S.
That funding level has been roughly the same for years and has not been meaningfully adjusted for inflation, St-Onge said.
The minister said the public broadcaster's parliamentary appropriation should be closer to the $62.20 per capita funding average of the other G7 countries.
She said the exact level of funding will be determined by a future prime minister or finance minister, but proposed it should rise over time as the broadcaster's mandate evolves.
The minister said, citing government research, there is a direct link between a public broadcaster's level of funding and its performance — suggesting a cash infusion would bring more eyeballs to the broadcaster's content, boosting market share and citizens' trust.
In addition to an appropriation hike, St-Onge is proposing to take the public broadcaster's funding out of the normal budgetary process, which is subject to the political whims of the day, and embed the funding formula in a separate act of Parliament so that the money is preset based on population levels.
St-Onge said that would offer the broadcaster "stable and predictable funding," and reduce the risk of political tinkering.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has long promised to defund CBC but keep its French-language service, Radio-Canada. He has said there's no need for English-language content because other broadcasters can fill the void, pointing to conventional TV ratings that show CBC is a laggard.
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