Juno News - March 06, 2022


More than 50,000 signatures on petition to defund CBC


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

180.69727

Word Count

1,529

Sentence Count

93

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which has been doing some tremendous work on this,
00:00:12.780 launched a petition, I think it was just one week ago, to call on the government to scrap
00:00:18.720 the CBC subsidy, to defund CBC. And this has now reached 52,000 signatures in just a week.
00:00:27.180 Tremendous work. Franco Terrazano is the federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
00:00:32.420 and joins me now. Franco, I know sometimes getting people to pay attention to
00:00:38.060 taxpayer spending has been challenging. It's why you work around the clock so tirelessly trying to
00:00:43.180 get people to pay attention. But have you ever had something with quite this uptake?
00:00:47.800 Well, we have had some very big petition numbers, but they accumulate over time, right? Like we did
00:00:53.100 have one petition delivery. It was about 200,000 signatures to scrap the governor general's perks,
00:01:00.400 like the lifetime annual expense account former governor generals get. But what's so different
00:01:07.040 about this petition, 52,000 signatures in a week. So Andrew, to me, that really shows a strong signal
00:01:15.040 that there's many Canadian taxpayers that are deeply, deeply concerned, but with the amount of money
00:01:20.520 that the government is sending to the CBC every year, and also that $600 million media bailout.
00:01:28.480 Yeah, the media bailout is a big one as well. And we've talked about it at great length at True
00:01:33.200 North, because in a lot of ways, it raises questions that a lot of people have as to whether
00:01:37.900 reporters are even fairly covering that because their livelihoods, their businesses, longevity depends
00:01:44.180 on it. But let me ask you, is this to you an issue of content? Is it an issue of the fact that we're
00:01:49.940 funding reporting and the fact that we're funding CBC? Or is it just about the funding itself rather than
00:01:56.140 the specific content that's being published? Well, Andrew, I think there's a lot of people who have a lot
00:02:00.660 of different thoughts when it comes to this matter. But from the Taxpayers Federation, it really boils down
00:02:06.160 to this. We believe that all Canadians should be able to keep their own money and decide which media
00:02:12.200 organizations they want to fund with their own money, right? Taxpayers should not be forced to
00:02:18.360 subsidize certain media organizations. So it really comes down to that. Let taxpayers decide which
00:02:24.500 organizations we want to support. But then also, too, on the other hand, Andrew, as you know, it's really
00:02:30.480 not fair for certain news organizations to have to compete with massive government funded organizations
00:02:37.640 like the CBC, more than a billion dollars every single year, or these other news outlets that are
00:02:43.420 getting some of that $600 million media bailout. So for us, it's all about let Canadians decide which
00:02:49.780 organizations we want to fund with our own money. Yeah, there is a leveling the playing field issue here
00:02:56.580 because all of a sudden, first off, you have to have government deciding what constitutes a media
00:03:01.620 outlet, what constitutes a journalism outfit that's eligible for funding, which raises significant
00:03:07.020 questions, even if I'm not aware of specific issues where an outlet's applied and has been denied.
00:03:12.740 But moreover, you're right. It means that the ones who may not take that, there are a number of
00:03:16.720 outlets like Black Locks Reporter is a great example. They are in the parliamentary press gallery. They're an
00:03:21.600 official media outlet, even if they don't go along with sometimes the mainstream media narrative on
00:03:26.500 things. They've said they don't want government funding. Well, all of a sudden, they're at a
00:03:30.700 competitive disadvantage because they have to deal with things without being able to rely on that
00:03:36.200 subsidy. So it almost incentivizes companies taking it because they don't want to be at a disadvantage to
00:03:41.980 their counterparts and their opponents. Yeah, and you know, you touched on this at the beginning of
00:03:46.840 the show, but just that I think we all agree that one of the most fundamental pillars of a strong and
00:03:52.780 healthy democracy is an independent press and independence both in practice, but also perception.
00:03:59.320 Right. I think there's many journalists out there who are doing a great job, but you can understand if
00:04:05.220 people perceive that they might have some bias when it's the government who is funding their
00:04:11.760 organizations. Right. I think that is a very key problem. And we're not the first ones to bring up
00:04:16.940 that objection. Right. There's we've we've heard it from other journalists in the past. But also,
00:04:23.200 too, you talk about how you now have an incentive for organizations to want to collect these tax
00:04:29.100 dollars. Well, what about us struggling taxpayers, the federal government? Right. Like what about what
00:04:34.040 about us struggling taxpayers? The federal government is already more than a trillion dollars in debt.
00:04:38.400 You break that down per person and that's more than thirty thousand dollars that each Canadian man,
00:04:43.520 woman and child is on the hook for. Right. How high of our tax bill does it have to get before we
00:04:48.820 actually have a federal government that finds some savings? And Andrew, that one point four billion
00:04:54.120 dollars to the CBC, the six hundred million dollar media bailout. Those are perfect areas to find some
00:04:59.880 savings. One point that I've always raised about CBC and this, again, should extend even if you love
00:05:06.480 CBC. I would love nothing more than for people to say, I love CBC so much I'm paying for a subscription
00:05:12.140 like I do for the Globe and Mail or the National Post or donating to True North or taking out a
00:05:17.260 subscription to the Western Standard, whatever the case is. People who like that. We're not saying
00:05:21.960 abolish the CBC. We're saying don't make it reliant on government money. Let it compete like anything
00:05:27.780 else. And even if even if we're going to have as a society this decision where we believe CBC is
00:05:33.260 important, CBC content's important. Why is it not a public good? Why is its content not free for other
00:05:39.360 people to republish? Why is it competing with private companies for the rights to carry the
00:05:44.880 Olympics, for example, something that companies pay a lot of money for? Why are they trying to elbow out
00:05:50.680 private sector media? That kind of defeats the purpose of CBC, which is to fill a void that they
00:05:55.920 say wouldn't exist in a free market. Andrew, so many good points that I want to dissect there.
00:06:01.960 Let's start with this. Even if we want to call this a public good, even if, right, does it really need
00:06:08.140 $1.4 billion every single year? Really $1.4 billion every single year? And to your earlier
00:06:16.420 point, you said, hey, we're not we're not looking to abolish the CBC, just remove the government
00:06:21.520 funding, right? The taxpayers money that has been forced to go to this organization. Now, we've been
00:06:27.460 doing a lot of digging through the annual reports just to just to make sure the numbers are correct.
00:06:31.760 And the last figure that I saw was that the CBC was able to raise about $500 million in non-government
00:06:39.340 revenue. So we're not saying abolish the CBC, just defund the subsidies that the government is giving
00:06:46.000 to the CBC. Now, who knows what would end up happening to the non-government revenue. But like I
00:06:52.080 said, the last number that we saw was $500 million not from the taxpayer. And I think there's an
00:06:58.860 important point there, because I don't think most Canadians, even many who signed that petition of
00:07:03.380 yours, would object to CBC saying, OK, we're going to get rid of the online news section. We're going
00:07:08.860 to get rid of, you know, Little Mosque on the Prairie or whatever the 2022 version of is. We're going to
00:07:14.340 get rid of all of that. We're going to broadcast in northern communities. We're going to broadcast in
00:07:18.940 indigenous languages. We're going to go where there is no private sector alternative. They could
00:07:23.460 probably do that for less than that $500 million you talked about. Yeah. Or it's certainly less
00:07:29.600 than the $1.4 billion every single year. Like I have to keep going to this, right? Because even if
00:07:35.140 you do want to make the argument that the government should be funding, I think, OK, like let's we can
00:07:39.120 arm wrestle over that for about a week. You and I going back and forth. But $1.4 billion every single
00:07:46.160 year. That is I think that is is quite unacceptable. And it's not just me. It's not just you. I think
00:07:53.260 that's one of the reasons why we saw 52,000 signatures on the petition in a week. That shows
00:07:58.700 me that there's many Canadians who clearly think that this is an issue and clearly think that this
00:08:04.720 is a big issue. And that petition is at taxpayer.com, correct? Yep, absolutely. Just head over to
00:08:10.140 taxpayer.com. Click on the petitions tab and you'll find it there. Franco Terrazano, Federal Director for the
00:08:15.980 Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Thanks very much. Good, sir. Hey, it was my pleasure. Thanks for
00:08:19.800 having me on. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to
00:08:24.120 True North at www.tnc.news.