Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre reiterated Monday his desire to privatize part of CBC/Radio-Canada. But he would spare at least the continuous news channel RDI, he assures, since it is the only source of information in French for many citizens outside Quebec.
At the microphone of Patrick Masbourian – on the airwaves of public radio, moreover –, Pierre Poilievre described CBC as a “great waste of money”. According to the Ontario MP, the English counterpart of Radio-Canada no longer has a reason to exist, because its private competitors in English Canada and the United States offer absolutely the same coverage.
The son of a francophone from Saskatchewan, Pierre Poilievre added, however, that he would maintain public funding for RDI if he one day becomes prime minister. “The role of government is to do what [le privé] can’t do. In English there are many options, but not in French. If you’re in Calgary and you want to listen to the news in French, there’s only one option, and that’s RDI,” he said in an interview Monday morning.
Pierre Poilievre did not, however, comment on the future of the other versions of Radio-Canada in French, such as ICI Télé, ICI Première or Tou.tv. His campaign team later let the Homework that he would reveal the details of his position in the coming months. His main opponents in this race, Patrick Brown and Jean Charest, did not comment on this outing. In the camp of the former Premier of Quebec, we are content to indicate that the latter will make known his intentions regarding CBC/Radio-Canada in the coming weeks.
The Friends of Radio-Canada, an organization that defends the public funding of the Crown corporation, strongly denounced Mr. Poilievre’s remarks. The group’s chief executive, Marla Boltman, has criticized the Tory MP for being obsessed with the CBC, whose coverage he has criticized repeatedly in recent months.
two solitudes
By taking care to distinguish CBC and Radio-Canada, Pierre Poilievre reminds us in his own way that the Crown corporation is part of two radically different realities. For good reason: last year, ICI Télé monopolized on average more than 25% of listening shares of the French-speaking market, while CBC represented only 5% of television consumption at prime time within its target audience.
According to the state corporation’s 2020-2021 annual report, Radio-Canada brought in $208 million in revenue over the past year; it’s slightly more than CBC, even if the French-language broadcaster targets a much smaller audience. CBC garners yet year after year 55% of public funding, against 45% for Radio-Canada.
Despite everything, journalism professor Jean-Hugues Roy is convinced that it would be a very bad idea to privatize the CBC and keep only Radio-Canada. “If CBC disappeared, a lot of people in English Canada would eventually realize that. A public service benefits from many more safeguards than private broadcasters. And there are regions in English Canada, such as the Far North, where it is not profitable for the private sector to ensure a presence. Only CBC can do it, ”says the one who teaches at the School of Media at UQAM.