Carney vows to boost CBC funding while also allowing ads

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OTTAWA — When it comes to CBC/Radio-Canada’s funding under a Carney-led government, the public broadcaster can expect the best of both worlds.

That is, more public funding while attracting private dollars in advertisement.

On Friday, Liberal Leader Mark Carney vowed to provide an initial $150 million funding increase, while directing CBC/Radio-Canada to strengthen its mandate. Eventually he would nearly double the $1.4 billion the public broadcaster receives in taxpayer dollars.

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“Across the country, Canadians rely on CBC/Radio-Canada,” he said during a visit in Montreal. “From Schitt’s Creek to Hockey Night in Canada and Mike Myers, these are products of Canada. They’re the result of strong, representative public broadcasting.”

Schitt’s Creek’s program run ended in 2020. While CBC broadcasts some Hockey Night in Canada games, the rights to produce and sell national hockey programming have been held exclusively by Rogers since 2014.

Carney promised to “strengthen” its mandate by developing a governance plan to improve accountability, further promote Canadian culture, add more resources to local bureaus and ensure it transmits “life-saving information” during emergencies.

“CBC/Radio-Canada is especially vital for Canadians in rural and remote areas where it’s often their only source of local information,” he said.

“Canadians rely on it to keep up with what is happening, and when disasters happen, such as forest fires, floods or storms that threaten their communities, public broadcasting is crucial. It’s a vital source of information to help people to stay safe,” he added.

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Carney said his plan in the long term would be for the broadcaster to see a long-term funding level more in line with the average funding of its counterparts among G7 countries.

“We can’t ask our public broadcaster to do all this without giving it the necessary resources. When we compare ourselves to France, the United Kingdom or Germany, we see that our public broadcaster is underfunded. This must change,” said Carney.

“Our expectation is that, in the following years, the financing will continue to increase until it becomes comparable to other broadcasters around the world.”

Currently, CBC/Radio-Canada’s public funding per capita is around $33.66, nearly half of the average funding of G7 countries, which is $62.20 per capita. Former heritage minister Pascale St-Onge promised to bring Canada closer to that average when she unveiled her plan for the CBC back in February.

Carney said St-Onge’s work on the issue “informed many of the decisions that we are taking and announcing today.”

There is, however, one major difference: Carney would allow CBC/Radio-Canada to continue collecting advertising and subscription revenues.

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St-Onge had warned that its “dependence on advertising and subscription revenues risks compromising its objectives of public service, by favouring revenue-generating content to the detriment of the social, cultural and democratic benefits intended in its mandate.”

In exchange for a boost in funding, she said there would be no advertisements around news and public affairs segments and no subscription fees for its digital services.

Last year, CBC/Radio-Canada generated $493.5 million in external revenue.

“To govern is to choose, and part of choosing is on funding models and ensuring that we have adequate funding for this enlarged mandate, and this crucial mandate for CBC/Radio-Canada,” said Carney about why he was keeping advertisements.

“It’s an informed judgment that, in many respects, is financial,” he added.

Carney is also proposing to make the broadcaster’s funding statutory, which means that Parliament will need to approve any future changes to its funding — not just cabinet.

That would make it harder for a future government to unilaterally decide to defund the broadcaster.

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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has vowed to “defund the CBC” while maintaining its French-language programming. However, he would have to overhaul the country’s broadcasting law in order to defund one part of the broadcaster and spare another.

“Canada’s identity and institutions are under attack by foreign interference, and instead of defending them, Pierre Poilievre is following President (Donald) Trump’s lead and taking aim at our institutions like CBC/Radio-Canada,” said Carney.

“Pierre Poilievre pretends you can keep one but not the other, but he’s not Solomon. You can’t split this baby,” he added, referring to the Biblical story of the “Judgement of Solomon.”

Speaking in Trois-Rivières, Que., Poilievre reiterated that his approach would not have an impact on Radio-Canada before pivoting to attacking Carney’s spending promises.

“Let’s be clear on this: Mr. Carney has not proposed a single penny in cost reductions in this government. He is now proposing to stack billions more costs on top of an already morbidly obese government,” he said.

“We need a change, folks. We can’t go on spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need, or our people are going to end up with even more brutal inflation.”

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

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