For now, Pierre Poilievre barks whenever he thinks of the CBC, but how far will he go if elected?
The Conservative leader is far from the first politician or the most famous to attack the public broadcaster. I like to recall that former Prime Ministers Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jean Chrétien were illustrious destroyers of the French network.
Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, especially critics of the English network. But neither of them went so far as to eliminate CBC/Radio-Canada.
Chrétien and Harper were the nastiest in slashing the broadcaster’s parliamentary appropriations.
Pierre Poilievre has well-defined and above all quite original ideas: no more a penny for the CBC, but for Radio-Canada, life is good. The Leader of the Opposition knows very well that Quebeckers care about their French network and francophones outside Quebec even more so. The low audience of the CBC – more or less 5% – makes him believe that Anglophones would see the English network disappear without flinching. I’m not so sure. Anglophones – the “native” ones in any case – are always very attached to the institutions that we would like to abolish.
Try, for example, to touch the RCMP despite its ineptitude or the Governor General despite its uselessness.
POILIEVRE’S LETTER
On Tuesday, April 11, in a letter to Elon Musk, another fanatic of the same ilk as Poilievre, he demanded that Twitter (owned by Musk) treat the CBC the same as Chinese state television or that Russian state television.
Poilievre wanted the social network to classify the CBC among media whose editorial content is controlled by the state, either through its financial resources, through direct or indirect political pressure, or through control of their production and distribution. distribution.
Poilievre, who never misses an opportunity to take on the CBC, took advantage of a Twitter blunder to make his request. A few days earlier, Musk’s network had reported that the BBC (the equivalent of the CBC in Britain) and NPR (US public radio) were state-funded and therefore similar to television and radio. radio from China and Russia.
FALSE PASS OF MADAME TAIT
Need I write that the BBC was quick to respond. Like CBC/Radio-Canada, British television enjoys complete independence from Parliament.
In a last-minute interview with the BBC itself on Tuesday, Elon Musk, a bit pitiful, said that Twitter would immediately change this connotation that his social network had stuck on the BBC.
It’s obvious that Musk will trash Poilievre’s letter, especially since it only mentions the CBC as state-controlled, but not Radio-Canada. However, the two networks belong to the same company and have the same management.
It is this independent relationship that frustrated Stephen Harper and Jean Chrétien so much. Both knew very well that they could do no more than reduce the amount granted annually to the public broadcaster.
It is because of this long tradition of independence that Catherine Tait, the CEO, was very ill-advised some time ago to write to Pierre Poilievre asking for a meeting. The CEO thus comforted the Conservative leader in his conviction that the CBC is in the pay of the current government.