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Lack of Government Support Threatens the Survival of Public Broadcasting in Canada

CBC Television For generations Canadians have counted on their public broadcaster to bring them news and cultural programming so that they can better understand their country and the world around them.

For generations Canadians have known where to turn to hear stories about fellow citizens, stories that remind them day in and day out of the shared richness of our diverse and collective identities.

And for generations Canadians have witnessed how the broadcaster that they own and subsidize with their tax dollars has brought them the world.

Canada is a country where Acadians remember 1755, where Loyalists celebrate their homesteads in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, and where the Métis pay homage to Dumont and Riel. From coast to coast to coast, Radio-Canada guarantees the French language remains strong, alive and exciting. CBC also contributes to the vitality of the minority language community in Quebec, reflecting it back to English-speaking Quebecers and to the rest of Canada.

CBC/Radio Canada reporters and hosts are among the best trained in the business.

CBC/Radio Canada producers and technicians are honoured worldwide for their expertise.

CBC.CA writers have made the Crown corporation’s website the most widely read site in Canada.

For CBC/Radio Canada employees, working for the public broadcaster is not just about collecting a paycheque: it is a vocation, a chance to be part of something bigger, an opportunity to be at the heart of helping to define who we are and what we are becoming.

No private broadcaster offers the range of services this vast and diversified country requires. Moreover, Canada’s private broadcasters are currently slashing their news gathering budgets and threatening to reduce their footprint in an effort to meet shareholder’s objectives.

But CBC/Radio Canada has a different raison d’être: to make sure the voices, ideas and stories of all Quebecers and all Canadians are heard and to make sure what happens in the rest of the world is interpreted through Canadian eyes.

CBC/Radio Canada is home to young musicians and feminist poets. It is a stage where philosophers can argue and a round table where survivors of residential schools can express their pain.

CBC/Radio Canada is home to Little Mosque on the Prairie, to Tout le monde en parle, to Ideas, and Quirks and Quarks.

It is where Michael Enright spends time with Alice Munroe and where Peter Mansbridge can take us on a tour of a Canadian military camp in Afghanistan.

And it is where Céline Galipeau makes us feel and think about the complexities of a fast developing country like India.

In mainland Quebec, the Community Radio Network brings news to English speakers living in communities from the Laurentians to the Lower North Shore. Without the CBC, fishers in Harrington Harbour and university professors in Lennoxville would be less able to see themselves reflected as part of a minority community that shares a past, a present and a future, and is an integral part of Quebec and Canadian society.

So tell us why is CBC/Radio Canada is being forced to cut 800 jobs across the country? Why is the government even considering obliging CBC/Radio Canada managers to cut five per cent more from a budget that – compared to other countries’ per capita spending on public broadcasting – is already among the lowest in the world?

Why is the government cutting support to artists and artisans who make Canada the envy of the world? Does the money the government saves now matter more than the health of our public institutions, than the culture we share as a country?

We call on all the progressive members of the Conservative caucus, Liberals, Bloquistes, New Democrats – and all of those who want to save the CBC – to speak out loudly and clearly.

I am, we are, dedicated to a healthy public broadcaster.

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