Public Displays of Disaffection

Why the Station Where Canada Lives May be Dying

NewsMichael Bramadat- Willcock — Published January 25, 2011

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper dined with Fox Broadcasting Company president Rupert Murdoch in 2009, it was a match made in heaven. The high profile dinner date also included the President of Fox News Roger Ailes and Kory Teneycke, Harper’s one time spokesperson turned vice-president of the Quebec-based media giant Quebecor.

Famous for his policy of cutting arts funding—including cuts of over $45 million in 2008—the Prime Minister has been squeezing the CBC, Canada’s only independent, publicly owned broadcasting corporation, ever since he came to power.

As the noose tightens around the CBC’s neck, Harper has facilitated a new player on the private media scene. Quebecor owns Sun News, which flies under the banner of “controversially Canadian,” and Teneycke is one of the project’s leading spokespersons.

“It’s not every day that a prime minister sees his one-time spokesperson taking control of a giant media chain’s coverage of his government. What will our journalism schools be telling their students about that?” mused columnist Lawrence Martin of The Globe and Mail in his Politics column.

Not shy to admit the biases of the new kid on the block, Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau told reporters that he is modeling the new network on Le Canal Nouvelles, a right-wing French-Language news network, and that the angle will be similar to that of the Toronto Sun. The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting group drew the link between Murdoch and Fox News, while the popular petition site Avaaz dubbed Sun News “Fox News North” and amassed an unprecedented amount of signatures in it’s “Stop Fox News North” campaign.

Ian Morrison, from the watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, has been vocal on the issue. “We recognize the threat posed by Harper could be the most serious peril the CBC has ever faced. Now is the time for all of us who love and depend on the CBC to stand up and be counted,” noted the FCB website.

The issue of the Harper Government’s agenda towards the CBC was recently taken up in a parliamentary debate, after the Heritage Minister was asked not to take his Parliamentary Secretary’s notion of cutting funding entirely. The motion was shot down and the issue remains on the table.

At a Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage hearing in November, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Dean Del Mastro asked Corus Entertainment’s Gary Maavara whether the CBC should continue to receive funding from the Government. He made clear that he was not speaking on behalf of public policy, but was seeking Maavara’s advice on the issue.

“[…] We invest over a billion government dollars, as you know, into a stage, when in fact the private sector would not only make use of that stage… they have so many already, and reinvest all of those dollars into Canadian content,” said the Minister. He pointedly asked Maavara if he thought Canadian broadcasting should move towards the private sector and said that he envisions “major blockbuster films” being produced in Canada under a private system. “I see creators with so much talent. I see a world that is begging for good-quality content.”

While the Harper government seems keen on getting its way, an FCB poll recently showed that a majority of respondents think “[the Prime Minister] and the Conservative government are hostile to the CBC and would like to diminish public broadcasting in Canada,” and that his government has a hidden agenda that favours private corporate broadcasters.

A majority of respondents thought that “Canada’s level of public broadcaster funding is indicative of the federal government’s treatment of the cultural sector overall.”

Members expressed concern that the CBC is not receiving adequate funding and would like to see the budget increased.

Over 70 per cent said they believe “the CBC provides value for taxpayer money,” and over 60 per cent expressed concern that “recently announced cuts to the CBC budget will reduce the amount of local news and regional coverage.”

While the debate rages on in Parliament, over the airwaves and in the homes of Canadians, the CBC and Harper Government remain at loggerheads over whether publicly funded content is important.

Whether or not Harper’s increasingly tight grip around the neck of the CBC in one hand, contrasting his open support of Sun News on the other is paramount to censorship remains to be seen. One thing is for sure, there is a new kid on the block; he’s clean-cut, conservative and ready for a fight. The new kid has powerful friends behind him and is not afraid of playing dirty if it means getting his way.

This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 20, published January 25, 2011.