The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, came to the defense of CBC / Radio-Canada on Monday, deeming it “sorry” that his Conservative rival Pierre Poilievre is attacking the “independent” and “local” public broadcaster.
“To me, it highlights a misalignment of values and a lack of understanding of how proud Canadians are of our institutions, and don’t like when billionaires are asked to help them attack our institutions,” Mr. Trudeau said at a press briefing.
On Sunday, the official account of the English network of Radio-Canada was identified by the social network Twitter as a media “funded by the government”. Last week, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, wrote a letter to the big boss of Twitter, the billionaire Elon Musk, with precisely this objective. He stated in this message that “we must protect Canadians from misinformation and manipulation by state media”.
Mr. Poilievre celebrated the appearance of this label, in the evening, writing: “now people know that this is Trudeau propaganda, not news.” The Conservatives have also posted a petition titled, in its French version, “Arrter de financier la SRC” [Société Radio-Canada].
“We were calling on this Liberal government to stop funding the CBC in order to save taxpayers’ money and ensure a free and competitive press in the Canadian media landscape,” the party’s website reads.
Justin Trudeau reacted on Monday by arguing that these kinds of remarks “illustrate a lot [de choses sur] the conservative Party “.
“The Conservatives cannot be trusted when […] they regularly attack culture, identity, quality independent journalism, among other local ones”, he said, on the sidelines of the announcement in Ottawa of funding intended for the company Ericsson for 5G network search.
In a series of tweets, the leader of the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, also commented on the exit of the leader of the official opposition. On the one hand, he agrees that Radio-Canada “is not beyond reproach”, in particular for having “a federalist leaning in the chain of command”, according to him. The Bloc leader is still defending the public media. “For the arts, information and French in the regions, it is very serious. »
The account of the French service of the public broadcaster, Radio-Canada, does not seem to be affected by the identification of Twitter for the moment.
Twitter defines “government-funded” media as news outlets that may be subject to government interference in editorial content, to one degree or another. The public broadcaster reiterated on the social network platform that this is “clearly not the case for CBC / Radio-Canada”.
In 2021-2022, CBC / Radio-Canada received $1.2 billion from the federal government, compared to $1.4 billion the previous fiscal year. The public broadcaster also derives revenue from advertising and subscriptions.
With The Canadian Press