Juno News - March 16, 2026


What comes next for the CBC？

Topics
CBC audience shrinking bubble laws and protests
Mentioned
Brian Lilly Catherine Tate Steve Madeley Bill Carroll Travis Durange Evan Solomon Doug Fisher Rex Murphy Don Cherry Ivan Gino Harper Chris Rebel Juno
Why did it take TWO WEEKS to learn that Iran BOMBED Canadian troops？ Liberals FLIP AGAIN on possible military role in Iran

Episode Stats


Length

26 minutes

Words per minute

164.2

Word count

4,398

Sentence count

175

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation wants the government to get rid of the state broadcaster, the CBC. They argue that it's a waste of money, and that without it, we won't have a free press. Chris Simms explains why.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 welcome to the fighter with chris sims i am chris sims i'm the alberta director for
00:00:09.960 the canadian taxpayers federation if you don't know what that is uh we are a feisty
00:00:15.880 protest group basically we're an advocacy group started way back in 1990 before the internet was
00:00:21.900 even a thing we fight for lower taxes less waste and more accountable government which is why
00:00:27.760 I'm going to talk about the CBC, the state broadcaster, as we affectionately like to call
00:00:33.640 it around here. The CBC takes more than $1.4 billion, billion dollars from taxpayers every
00:00:43.420 year. To put that into perspective, for $1.4 billion, you could otherwise pay the full-time
00:00:52.160 salaries of around 7,000 cops and 7,000 paramedics. So we could either have 14,000
00:01:01.360 frontline first responders getting paid, or the CBC, which is government-funded media,
00:01:09.060 which is an anathema to a free press. Folks, a free press means journalists and reporters.
00:01:18.720 A free press is free from government.
00:01:22.680 Government pay, government influence, government corruption, government control, okay?
00:01:28.500 Free press is not a whole bunch of old-timey newspapers stacked up on a table being handed out for free at a bus station.
00:01:34.200 No, it is free from government.
00:01:37.460 And we got anything but in this country right now.
00:01:40.300 And the CBC is the biggest reason for that.
00:01:44.040 And I'll put it this way.
00:01:45.540 Some of the stuff that you would have heard from Travis Durange at Parliamentary Committee, I can't repeat here because I don't have parliamentary immunity, but it was pretty damning.
00:01:56.140 But even if you washed away all of the allegations of toxicity and drama and all that stuff, the numbers, the numbers alone at the state broadcaster are enough to defund this thing.
00:02:10.900 I'll get into them really quick here.
00:02:12.540 again 1.4 billion dollars a year the manager class okay the directors and manager that thick
00:02:21.980 class that never gets out of the studio and doesn't actually cover news it's been growing
00:02:26.400 and growing like a blob every single year meanwhile their ratings their viewership
00:02:33.460 is in the basement the latest numbers I saw it's like they have an audience share
00:02:40.100 on CBC News World of less than 2%. So think about that. That means that 98% of Canadians
00:02:51.960 are choosing to watch something other than CBC News World or News Network, whatever they call
00:02:57.840 it now on TV. Okay. So then you're thinking, well, the news can be depressing. Maybe people
00:03:03.760 like entertainment better. Okay. Oh, that's fair. Yeah. Still not great. If you tune in to CBC's
00:03:11.260 main channel on television, more than 96% of Canadians are still choosing to watch something
00:03:19.140 else. Their audience share is just over 3%. And that's during prime time. That's not an average
00:03:29.240 over the whole day. That is like after the supper hour news, everybody's sitting down
00:03:34.380 seven o'clock. What's on the telly? More than 96% of Canadians are saying, no, I'm watching
00:03:42.920 something else. Speaking of that supper hour newscast, because people often say, oh, well,
00:03:48.660 you know, we need it for local news. You know, we need CBC for local news, because how will we
00:03:54.100 ever remain Canadian without a government funded media goliath crazy but that's the argument
00:04:01.620 the viewership for the CBC's local local tv news is a rounding error
00:04:11.300 i'm not kidding in Toronto less than one percent of the population of Toronto
00:04:17.380 were watching the local supper hour newscast these are based on ratings from like a year ago okay
00:04:22.820 I'm not this isn't from 10 years ago this these are very recent ratings um Calgary same deal
00:04:28.100 less than one percent Vancouver downtown less than one percent of those cities populations
00:04:34.840 are watching their local supper hour newscast on CBC and we are paying 1.4 billion dollars for this
00:04:44.660 thing speaking of money uh Catherine Tate is no longer the president and CEO but the new president 1.00
00:04:52.040 and CEO is still making at a CEO level seven wage. That means she's being paid about half a million 0.98
00:04:59.940 dollars a year. And remember when Tate was at committee and getting grilled about things like
00:05:06.300 bonuses and being asked about these dismal basement level rounding error ratings on TV?
00:05:12.620 And she said something to the effect of, oh, well, you know, millions of people are subscribing
00:05:16.780 through gem it's all moved online through gem people have been asking okay um how many subscribers
00:05:22.940 do you have to gem we're the ones paying the bills okay we are the shareholders we're the taxpayers
00:05:27.660 we're the ones writing the checks tell us how many subscribers you have to gem they won't say
00:05:34.460 and the cbc is suing to keep that information private it's really mind-blowing because at the
00:05:42.700 end of the day the cbc is a huge waste of money next to nobody is watching it and journalists
00:05:48.940 should not be paid by the government how far back does this go how did we get here and how can we
00:05:56.780 get to the point where we stop paying for the cbc let's find out joining me now is brian lily he is
00:06:03.900 of course the senior columnist for the toronto sun newspaper chain he's also the host of his own
00:06:10.060 podcast full comment i strongly recommend you listen to that because it is my bridge between
00:06:15.420 the kind of upstart media and the original media it's got this kind of orange logo on it if you're
00:06:21.700 looking at it you know i'm in my 40s if i'm explaining that on podcast brian um you're
00:06:26.420 actually in ottawa right now and i couldn't help but notice on the wide shot that you've got like
00:06:30.900 cfra banners and stuff behind you this is inviting me back when i first met you in our early 20s
00:06:35.920 what are you up in Ottawa for right now? So last night was the 10-year anniversary roast for Bill
00:06:44.480 Carroll being the morning show host at 580 CFRA. You and I both worked there in our younger years
00:06:51.000 and back when Steve Madeley was host and when Steve was retiring, Bill came in and took over
00:06:57.080 and you and I worked there again. We both worked there a couple of times. We both worked there
00:07:02.120 again uh 10 years ago you were working on evan solomon show i got i had my own show it was it
00:07:08.560 came in last night for uh bill's roast so i was one of the speakers got to roast him
00:07:13.060 andy kim the uh the canadian singer songwriting legend was there uh bob reed who's on 1010 in
00:07:21.040 fact we're all just you know downstairs in bill's kitchen right now having coffee when you texted
00:07:25.180 me to say hey buddy we're you're supposed to be on with me so this is this is why you're in a
00:07:31.720 different studio i had to ask you brian um you've been following what's been happening at committee
00:07:37.740 on parliament hill with this gentleman who used to work for the cbc travis danraj my understanding
00:07:44.280 is you've been speaking to him off and on over the years what was your impression of his testimony
00:07:50.120 because when i was listening to parts of it i'm like that sounds familiar what was your take on
00:07:55.400 this well you know you're one of my many friends who's worked at cbc over the years and his
00:08:03.100 discussion about the way that there is a political bias at cbc rang true um now just for everyone to
00:08:14.040 be clear i've known travis for a long time as well we worked together at queens park
00:08:17.180 is the problem of being in the business so long you eventually know everyone
00:08:21.420 yeah and uh and as it's weaned down uh you know as you get older and most people are smart and
00:08:28.840 leave the industry you know everyone um so uh i had heard a lot of what travis had said at committee
00:08:37.260 prior you know just over phone calls and coffee and and such um you know and so none of it was
00:08:45.160 shocking to me uh the fact that he was willing to name names while he had albeit he named names
00:08:52.660 while he had parliamentary immunity was good uh there is a real problem inside cbc and there are
00:09:00.760 you know folks who are using their um their position there not for the public good but for
00:09:10.260 their own, I think. So it was interesting testimony and a little plug. He'll be on
00:09:15.020 full comment. He's my guest for the full comment podcast on Monday's episode. So
00:09:20.240 at 3 a.m. whenever we release it, that'll be it. We had a good chat yesterday about
00:09:25.700 what he did, why he's doing it, what he hopes to come from it. Look, we all pay
00:09:30.820 $1.4 billion a year to pay for CBC. We, you know, if we're going to have a public
00:09:39.560 broadcaster, then it should actually function for all Canadians. And it shouldn't be a talking
00:09:46.220 points club for downtown Toronto or downtown Ottawa elite, which is what it is, which by the
00:09:54.240 way, uh, and I think I've shared this clip with you before is a clip from 1964, uh, from the
00:10:01.740 father of a former colleague of ours, guy named Doug Fisher was a newly elected MP from Thunder
00:10:08.080 bay and he represented the ccf that tells you how long ago for those that don't know the ccf was the
00:10:13.120 party before the ndp and he was complaining uh back in the 60s that cbc represented just the
00:10:22.240 downtown cores of toronto montreal and ottawa and didn't represent the rest of the country that
00:10:27.600 still rings true today and they do not represent uh conservative views fairly that's a problem
00:10:36.720 that's a problem it has been a problem uh i did work there for a few weeks in between uh bell
00:10:43.760 which was ctv and back before sun news network got started up thank goodness sun news got started up
00:10:49.120 um some of what he was saying and that i was hearing uh sounded familiar um i'll put it this
00:10:55.760 way i found that as a a rural western canadian i was born and raised out here and i i felt like i
00:11:01.840 I was dispatched out to the Capitol for a few decades.
00:11:05.360 I didn't feel heard, as the kids like to say, in that newsroom.
00:11:10.100 And so I wasn't surprised with some of the things he was saying.
00:11:14.440 Well, I remember you talking about a story meeting where they were discussing crime
00:11:20.120 and that folks in the CBC Bureau talked about those who wanted a tough-on-crime approach
00:11:26.800 as if they were aliens from another planet.
00:11:30.200 Yes. So there was a theory back then. I have to be careful not to name too many names. There was a theory back then that there were secret supermax prisons being built across Western Canada for some reason, and nobody knew about them. And they were trying to investigate this. And the way they described the idea of the justice system, the idea of punishment, and they used that word like they spelled it out with a bunch of syllables, punishment was foreign.
00:11:58.080 And I'm sitting there from talk radio, from our origins, going, what is going on in here?
00:12:05.320 And what gets me, Brian, is, so even if, let's just say for argument's sake, even if the late Rex Murphy, God rest his soul, were hosting the news and Don Cherry were delivering the sports, I might enjoy watching that more. 0.97
00:12:19.380 But the money spent on this thing, the money alone, the numbers alone, are enough to defund this sucker. 0.91
00:12:26.620 You just mentioned $1.4 billion. Put another way, that could instead pay the full-time salaries of 0.94
00:12:35.440 about 7,000 cops plus 7,000 paramedics. So instead of 14,000 first responders frontline,
00:12:45.900 we've got the CBC. And what gets me too, Brian, isn't just the cost, it's the secrecy around it.
00:12:51.480 like for the ad issue panel for example that fossilized panel that's on the national
00:12:56.800 we get the scintillating perspectives stretching from downtown montreal to downtown toronto
00:13:03.480 every week but we don't get to know how much they're getting paid last i heard it was between
00:13:08.260 three and four hundred bucks a pop for those appearances but they won't say it's more than
00:13:12.700 that uh because when i was on dan raj's show i insisted on getting paid i was on it maybe four
00:13:18.980 times and i said yeah i'll go on but only if i'm paid because i know you guys pay for appearances
00:13:24.740 i was getting 520 bucks a pop there's no way that they're not getting less than 750 to a thousand
00:13:30.660 dollars in appearance and that was on news network so there for the national they must be getting
00:13:36.660 you think over 700. oh for sure for sure um oh my goodness so which fine like you you pay for
00:13:44.820 content, but you say it stretches all the way from downtown Montreal to downtown Toronto. It
00:13:49.360 also stretches from, uh, left to far left. You know, what I used to say about CBC, uh, back in
00:13:56.620 the, we were covering the purchase of the F-35 back in the Sun News Network days. And I would
00:14:02.380 also always put up a photo of the plane and CBC's logo. And I said, they're going to cost you the
00:14:07.260 same per year, but one offends you when one defends you.
00:14:10.040 is that when you were writing your book on it i think that was uh yeah around the time i wrote
00:14:17.900 the book or just after um yeah for those that don't know i wrote a book about cbc i have been
00:14:23.040 asked if i will update that one maybe i should maybe i was going to do it on why pierre should
00:14:28.980 defund it if he won but of course that the winning part didn't happen we were i could smell the barn
00:14:35.520 We were so close on that one on defunding the CBC. To the numbers, again, in the industry, journalists who work in private media would typically say for every one of us, there's like four of them and most of them are managers by them being in the CBC, whoever sent to an event.
00:14:54.820 And it's true. The rank and file growth of management class at the CBC has been unbelievable.
00:15:03.480 And the number of people paid well over 100 grand has been exploding too.
00:15:08.840 And what gets me, Brian, is that we're seeing their management class grow and grow and grow and all these overpaid.
00:15:14.280 Basically, they're just media bureaucrats. And meanwhile, their ratings are going down.
00:15:19.560 Like I just looked at their audience share and it's in the basement.
00:15:22.440 yep yeah and look um across broadcast media that has become a problem because of shows like this
00:15:29.140 people are watching online more um i i i will regularly hit more people um with online
00:15:38.420 appearances um than the the national will and i you know if i'm pitching someone for a big
00:15:45.660 interview now i say you will get more viewers than you will on one of the main networks and
00:15:52.100 it's accurate. So, you know, people are voting with their feet. They just can't vote with their
00:15:56.500 wallets yet. I don't think that's going to change because, you know, the liberals have offered them
00:16:02.520 more money. They love this network. It's their favorite. So that's not going anywhere. That's
00:16:08.820 unfortunate. But the audience size does continue to shrink. It does. It does. I will gently point
00:16:16.060 out that back when Catherine Tate was the president and CEO, people remember how much fun we had
00:16:21.040 watching her at committee because she was so animated. The CEO and president has changed now,
00:16:26.900 but the bills have not. So the CEO and president is still paid roughly half a million dollars a
00:16:32.820 year. But what Tate said back to your point of more people are watching online, remember how she
00:16:38.740 said millions of Canadians are using GEM like all the time. She made it sound like it was happening
00:16:44.920 all the time. So we were super curious. We're like, hey, well, how many subscribers do you have
00:16:49.740 to Jem then. So if they're all leaving TV, where literally nobody is watching the local
00:16:54.760 supper hour newscast, it was less than 1% for the suppertime newscast on CBC. It was
00:17:00.160 crazy low. And she's saying, oh, well, they're all migrating to Jem. And we said, okay, how
00:17:04.900 many subscribers do you have? They won't say. And they're suing to try to keep that secret.
00:17:11.820 What gets me, Brian, is that this is our money. If we're paying for this, shouldn't we know?
00:17:16.200 I, I, so they became subject to the, uh, access to information act under Harper.
00:17:22.520 And, um, from 2010 until 2015, my first go round at the Toronto sun, uh, out of the
00:17:29.400 parliament hill bureau, I, that's what prompted the book about CBC, by the way, that was doing
00:17:35.160 all these access to information stories.
00:17:37.640 And like, at one point we asked them a simple question, how many, uh, vehicles do you own
00:17:43.720 or lease and that's you know what they in ottawa the they call how many bricks are in the peace
00:17:50.200 tower question it shouldn't be controversial you just answer it they redacted everything
00:17:57.080 in the papers they released uh and so what we could find was they had one ford sedan
00:18:03.560 and a truck and so i wrote the story cbc will only admit to having one ford sedan and a truck
00:18:09.720 and embarrass them and they were forced at committee to say well that's not true well then
00:18:14.200 why didn't you release the the information um that was that was all difficult for them
00:18:20.200 it's so hard for them to climb down and talk to the peasants the ones who actually pay the bills 1.00
00:18:25.400 um i wanted to briefly i know you have to get going uh but i wanted to briefly ask your thoughts
00:18:30.200 on bill c9 we're getting so many emails about this one of my former colleagues christine van
00:18:35.800 Gein with the Canadian Constitution Foundation. Her team is fighting C9 directly as an issue of
00:18:41.400 free expression. Have you been keeping up on this? It looks like a pretty serious thing.
00:18:46.880 To a degree. And so there's some parts that I can live with and some parts that I think are
00:18:54.840 going to be dangerous. And I've seen enough slippery slopes to know one when I see one and
00:18:59.720 people say, oh, don't worry, that will never happen. So there is the push to say there's
00:19:05.300 protection for religious institutions. So places of worship, churches, mosques, synagogues,
00:19:11.140 that there's going to be to a degree of bubble zone around that. So you can't have protests.
00:19:16.100 And there've been some pretty violent protests at Toronto synagogues. I know people that are,
00:19:21.840 like Christine would probably say, this is an infringement on free expression. And yes, it is.
00:19:29.120 But we already have these bubble zone laws in place for abortion clinics. 1.00
00:19:33.140 You can be arrested in Canada for privately praying across the street from the abortion clinic that's around the corner from the House of Commons.
00:19:44.820 We've got bubble laws around hospitals. 0.83
00:19:49.080 So, okay, if we're accepting them as a society,
00:19:52.000 then I have no trouble saying, you know what,
00:19:55.080 you shouldn't have a violent protest that stops people 1.00
00:19:57.900 from going into their synagogue just because you're a Jew-hating jerk. 1.00
00:20:02.800 And that's what's been happening in Toronto. 1.00
00:20:05.020 The part that the Conservatives were really fighting on was
00:20:09.580 there is currently a defense of religious faith for...
00:20:18.220 hate uh criminal hate speech laws so if you remember that there was the imam in uh montreal
00:20:24.320 they got charged with hate crime hate speech because he was basically calling on allah to
00:20:30.440 kill all the infidels the unbelievers um he said well i was just quoting scripture he was quoting 0.99
00:20:38.880 from his holy texts so they couldn't do that the bloc has always hated this idea that that is a 0.88
00:20:44.620 defense and so they agreed to support the bill if the liberals would get rid of that and the
00:20:50.420 liberals said yes the fear is that it will criminalize parts of the bible or the torah
00:20:56.700 or the quran any holy text if it says something that others don't like uh they claim that will
00:21:04.040 never happen i can see groups suing to make it happen um to say that you know parts of
00:21:11.540 libiticus that talked about homosexuality that that is hate speech and therefore we have to get 0.61
00:21:16.340 rid of it i can see someone suing for that and given the state of our courts i can see it happening
00:21:21.540 um so there is some concern around that but the liberals have the votes um the bloc is backing it
00:21:30.400 and it'll be interesting the senate has been giving some pushback lately so we'll see but
00:21:36.440 um you know they could have split the bill and had more support for the bubble law stuff not
00:21:43.900 sure why they need to to get into this interesting the taxpayers federation we were fighting some of
00:21:49.840 the other online censorship laws were basically it was going to start regulating what you could
00:21:54.600 hear see and share online because we were very worried uh with those different laws for example
00:22:00.600 that even what we were saying on things like carbon taxes if you remember ministers were
00:22:05.040 calling that disinformation and misinformation directly and they were really starting to clamp
00:22:10.380 down on saying we can start outlawing misinformation and disinformation or filtering for it protecting
00:22:16.780 Canadians from it and so we're like hey now um if we can't express ourselves freely then we can't
00:22:22.800 hold the government to account and I was hearing from some other folks saying that this c9 could 1.00
00:22:28.460 fit into that bigger censorship puzzle um once again brian uh give us a plug for uh your show
00:22:35.000 with travis uh where can they find full comment it'll be on uh the toronto sun's youtube channel
00:22:40.480 uh it'll be on anywhere you get your podcasts and of course i'll i'll post it on my sub stack um
00:22:45.960 just brianlily.com will uh and i'll be sharing it on socials that'll come out on monday
00:22:51.860 About a 45-minute good casual conversation like you and I have.
00:22:57.920 It's two folks that are friends talking about an issue, but I think it makes a good chat.
00:23:03.740 Awesome.
00:23:04.200 I know we're chasing him here at Juno News too.
00:23:06.260 Brian, thank you so much for giving us part of your day today.
00:23:09.000 All right.
00:23:09.360 Talk soon, Chris.
00:23:10.220 You bet.
00:23:10.820 Once again, that is Brian Lilly.
00:23:12.760 He is the senior columnist, I love calling him that, for the Toronto Sun newspaper chain.
00:23:18.540 For folks who are watching this, of course, on Juno News and on YouTube, online, I strongly recommend you listen to Brian's show for two reasons.
00:23:29.560 One, it's very informative. He keeps up on stuff that's happening, especially on a national level.
00:23:34.940 But two, Brian has kind of worked on both sides of the fence.
00:23:39.240 OK, so he's worked in full on mainstream media and he's also worked in what I would call more upstart media.
00:23:46.560 Sun News Network was just definitely an upstart media.
00:23:49.940 It was the one that came before True North.
00:23:53.000 It was the one that came before Juno.
00:23:54.460 It was the one that came before Rebel, even Western Standard to a certain extent with 0.99
00:23:58.400 their online version.
00:23:59.820 And so and he worked in talk radio for so long, covering stuff as a beat reporter and
00:24:05.460 including things like courts, City Hall.
00:24:08.160 So he can kind of speak both languages.
00:24:10.380 He's bilingual in the media world.
00:24:12.780 And I don't know about you, but I have trouble watching a lot of mainstream media nowadays because I'm like, hmm, I can see past the mirror.
00:24:22.100 I can see past the curtain. Whereas with Brian, he's worked in both directions.
00:24:26.080 So he's kind of my universal translator when it comes to things mainstream media.
00:24:31.020 And it's important for us to keep our ear on what the press gallery is doing, thinking and saying, because they're the ones that build the narrative, folks.
00:24:41.080 they're the ones that wind up coming up with crazy ideas that are going to cost us a lot of money
00:24:46.460 remember when we couldn't even say carbon tax on their shows they kept on calling it a price on
00:24:52.060 carbon well then all of a sudden the carbon tax was gone and it was the best thing ever to get
00:24:56.660 rid of it funny how things stay the same until they suddenly change so go check out brian's
00:25:01.900 podcast i listen to it on my phone uh and be sure of course this is where we have these freewheeling
00:25:07.480 conversations, okay? You're not going to see a conversation like what Brian and I just had
00:25:11.820 on the CBC. And we kind of heard about all that at committee and why. Fundamentally, folks,
00:25:19.260 journalists should not be paid by the government, period. Here at Juneau, they're not being paid by
00:25:24.540 the government. At the CBC, they're taking more than $1.4 billion from you this year.
00:25:31.840 And if you don't want to think about, say, 7,000 police officers and 7,000 paramedics,
00:25:38.520 so 14,000 first responders getting paid instead, think of any other profession where they make
00:25:44.060 around $100,000. So that could be like a nurse, right? It could be a plumber, right? Picture that
00:25:50.400 a tradesman. Picture that amount and then do the math. It's 14,000 of those folks that we could be
00:25:59.160 otherwise paying. But instead, we've got the CBC with a growing management class, super dwindling
00:26:06.740 viewership numbers. And then they try to say, oh, but we get online through Gem and they won't even
00:26:14.620 tell us how many subscribers they have. If they have millions of subscribers, just say so. Just
00:26:20.980 say so. But they won't. So folks, thank you so much for watching this. Be sure if you want the
00:26:27.600 inside scoop on stuff, including, like, latest interviews with premiers from across the country,
00:26:34.140 latest interviews with headline makers that are giving testimony on Parliament Hill.
00:26:38.700 Be sure to subscribe to Juno News, and if you're watching this online, be sure to like
00:26:43.420 this video, and most importantly, share it with your friends.