Whither the CBC?
- First Posted: Oct 11 2011 10:27 AM
- Updated: about 2 hours ago
As the CBC faces drastic budget cuts and committee hearings into its practices, it seems the Tories have the public broadcaster squarely in their sights.
Postmedia's Randy Boswell reveals some of the double-talk surrounding the fate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation amid the federal government's budget-cutting measures, with many signs pointing to the Conservatives flip-flopping over their promise to maintain the CBC as is. Every government department is expected to cut expenditures by five per cent to help bring the budget back into the black by 2015, but the CBC could face at least a 10-per-cent cut – more than $100 million of its $1.1-billion budget. These cuts would follow a federal election in which the Tories, and, in particular, Heritage Minister James Moore, promised to "maintain or increase" funding for the broadcaster, its French-language equivalent, and its numerous web and radio properties.
Adding further concern are a slate of parliamentary committee meetings being held on the CBC's refusal to comply with a handful of access-to-information requests, which the broadcaster has defended on the grounds that making public some of its commercial data would help out its competitors. As Boswell notes: "Opposition MPs have warned ... amount to a CBC-bashing exercise and a possible prelude to an era of sustained and deeply damaging budget cuts at the Mothercorp." The Canadian right's disdain for the CBC has been known for a long time – heck, the public broadcaster has been the target of the Sun chain's only investigative journalism for the past five years – but never have the Conservatives had the political power to actually do something about it. With a Conservative majority and a mandate to balance the budget, expect the CBC to play the part of an ideological sacrificial lamb in the coming years, even if the party sacrificing it specifically promised to leave it alone just five months ago.
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