Editor:
A flyer came through downtown office doors last week from Blake Richards, our MP, asking for suggestions for the next budget. Coming from the most obsessively secretive and centralized government likely ever seen in Canada this novel request caught my attention. I think we should assume the request is sincere and make suggestions. Here is mine, along with reasons why perhaps it should be yours too.
I am asking the government to maintain funding for the CBC. Since gaining minority control over parliament the Harper government has been ruthlessly hacking away at the CBC’s morale and operating budget. Harper is not the only prime minister to cut CBC funding. It started with Mulroney and continued with Chrétien and leveled off with Paul Martin. However more alarming about Stephen Harper’s stance on the CBC is that it has been so persistent and contradictory and now it seems that he plans to shut it down altogether.
True, Harper is known as the master of ‘contradiction’. But what is certain is that he dislikes all public institutions, and a few weeks ago Dean Del Mastro, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage suggested that perhaps it was time the government shut down CBC. Asked in the House of Commons, Stephen Harper twice declined to deny this. Germaine in the budget flyer is the question whether the government should sell off crown corporations and assets to balance a ‘temporary deficit’ – an odd idea that – selling off national assets and institutions (like the CBC?) to alleviate a ‘temporary’ deficit.
The CBC is already struggling to maintain its award-winning journalism and its function as Canada’s public broadcaster. But it is still envied by many nations, and especially by citizens south of the border where private sector partisan media empires have destroyed intelligent public debate. Concerns are being raised there that democracy is under threat for want of arms length media. Now, more than ever, following the demise of the long form census form with all of the official lies surrounding it, Canada needs institutions for the public good -– like the CBC.
Most Canadians agree. A recent Pollara census found that 88 per cent of Canadians believe that as Canada’s economic ties with the U.S. increase, it is becoming more important to strengthen Canadian culture and identity; 81 per cent believe CBC is one of the things that helps distinguish Canada from the U.S.; 78 per cent tune in to some form of CBC programming; 76 per cent rated CBC fulfillment of its public mandate as ‘good’, ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’; 83 per cent believe the CBC is important in protecting Canadian identity and culture; 74 per cent would like to see the CBC strengthened in their region. Tellingly, 51 per cent believe the Harper government has a hidden agenda that favours private corporate broadcasters and 52 per cent believe the Harper government is under-funding the CBC so that it can turn it into a private, commercial broadcaster.
Everyone who believes in the need for accurate public information about Canada and the world should take action now. Stephen Harper recently appointed Hubert Lacroix as President of CBC – a Montreal mergers and acquisitions lawyer whose only governance experience has been as executive chair of TeleMedia as that company sold off its broadcasting properties some years ago.
Here’s what you can do: get more information from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting www.friends.ca/. Contact Blake Richards at [email protected] and Stephen Harper at [email protected] with your budget suggestion. Ask them to adequately fund CBC because it is a national treasure which helps maintain both our democracy and our sense of community from coast-to-coast-to-coast. Tell them you support the principle of state-funded public broadcasting and demand that they support it.
Don’t be partisan! Even if you don’t like them, cc your letter to Michael Ignatieff [email protected] and to Jack Layton [email protected] because they know that 88 per cent of Canadians feel as you do and will pressure the government. Act now or you may be depending on Sun Media for ‘impartial’ news. If you don’t ask for something you can’t expect it to be in the budget.
Colin Ferguson
Canmore
