Juno News - Trudeau wants more money and bigger role for CBC

00:00:00.000 Part of Justin Trudeau's list of priorities for the new Parliament is to

00:00:10.000 give more responsibility and you better believe that also means more money to CBC.

00:00:15.320 Laid out in Justin Trudeau's mandate letter to the new heritage minister Stephen Gilbo is a line

00:00:22.080 that calls on Minister Gilbo to quote strengthen the regional mandate of CBC Radio Canada to

00:00:28.440 broadcast more local news and require CBC Radio Canada to open up its digital platform.

00:00:35.220 Now whenever the government says it's to strengthen something and we see this in other parts of the

00:00:40.480 heritage mandate letter it ultimately means to give it more money. Strengthen means provide

00:00:46.460 more funding to this. CBC already gets upwards of 1.3 billion dollars a year. We know the government

00:00:52.960 has also put about 600 million dollars to bankrolling other aspects of the news and journalism

00:00:58.660 sectors in Canada and now CBC is supposed to apparently pick up the slack and be the larger

00:01:05.140 local news provider. An iPolitics piece picked up on this and in it it quoted Minister Gilbo as saying

00:01:13.440 that he's yet to have a conversation with CBC but would ensure they receive adequate funding for any

00:01:20.220 new mandates. The article also points out that Minister Gilbo plans to produce more regional

00:01:26.400 content by hiring more people, opening more offices or potentially having CBC partnerships

00:01:31.840 with existing media. Now the idea that CBC can be on the front lines of the local news battle

00:01:38.180 is a big concern here. The CBC mandate is supposed to be one that is delivering services that the private

00:01:44.700 sector cannot do. CBC has a track record of going into markets that already have successful private

00:01:50.660 sector operations and competing with them. This happened in my own city in London, Ontario and the

00:01:56.500 idea that CBC would become a local voice didn't end up happening because they filled the airwaves with

00:02:01.920 people that were imported from other parts of the country and we see this happen for CBC time and

00:02:07.180 time again. The CBC is not interested in doing the work that is less sexy, that's not competing with

00:02:13.920 the private sector like focusing on communities that don't have private journalism enterprises.

00:02:19.700 And one of the interesting things that Minister Gilbo said in this iPolitics piece is that CBC does not

00:02:26.080 compete with private sector business models. That's just not true. If it were true, CBC wouldn't be

00:02:31.460 broadcasting the Olympics, for example, or other reruns of sitcoms and movies and other things that

00:02:38.080 private sector media do focus on and do deliver and oftentimes do with a much smaller budget than CBC

00:02:45.160 has given thanks to the federal government. So let's dispense with this notion that CBC is a savior when

00:02:51.720 it arrives in communities. Oftentimes it's hurting the local companies that are trying to do the heavy

00:02:57.380 lifting on this and if we are going to have CBC moving forward, we either have to look at a model

00:03:03.040 where its funding comes privately or a model where its content is accessible publicly to all other

00:03:09.480 companies. Make it more like a wire service rather than a goliath of a competitor to them. But the reason

00:03:16.060 I find this so dangerous is that we've already seen Justin Trudeau promise time and time again that he will be

00:03:21.600 a friend of the CBC, even jokingly during the campaign when he handed a platter of poutine over

00:03:27.360 to a CBC reporter and said the liberals will always look out for CBC. Well, the reality is they're

00:03:33.000 looking out for CBC and that means that CBC is in many respects beholden to the government. Beholden

00:03:40.000 to the government who is assuring its longevity even at the expense of taxpayers. For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.

Juno News - January 01, 2020