Pledge to CBC looks shaky

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This article was published 11/10/2011 (5187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The CBC, embroiled in both a legal fight and a parliamentary probe over its record on responding to access-to-information requests, is now also bracing for deep funding cuts, perhaps $100 million or more, from its annual federal allotment of about $1.1 billion.

The prospect of a severely slashed budget has emerged despite Conservative election promises to “maintain or increase” support for the public broadcaster and amid fears now openly expressed by top executives that the coming cuts could be driven even deeper by relentless attacks from the CBC’s competitor, Quebecor, and its conservative-minded network of television stations, websites and Sun newspapers.

After a Quebec arts-funding flap that may well have cost the federal Conservatives a majority government in 2008, Heritage Minister James Moore made it a mission to reassure anxiety-filled, culture-minded Canadians right through the 2011 election campaign that the CBC was in no danger of being defunded or otherwise diminished.

It became Moore’s mantra, a soothing message track replayed regularly in recent years despite the hopes nurtured in certain corners of his party’s support base for some serious budget-slashing at the CBC, a public broadcaster generally seen as unsympathetic to upper- and lower-case conservative causes.

So it was no great surprise when, the day after the May 2 election this year, Moore again offered comforting words that the new majority Conservative government was committed to maintaining — perhaps even bolstering — its support for the CBC.

“We believe in the national public broadcaster,” he said in a post-victory interview with the CBC. “We have said that we will maintain or increase support for the CBC. That is our platform and we have said that before and we will commit to that.”

Moore went on to praise the network as “the infrastructure around which Canadian arts and culture is built, so of course it is central and it is key.”

But in the wake of Moore’s acknowledgments in recent weeks that the CBC will face significant budget cuts after all, with scenarios of “at least five per cent” and “at least 10 per cent” in play, critics are wondering what happened to the minister’s steady-as-she-goes campaign promise.

With a Conservative-dominated House committee hearing testimony this fall about the access controversy, opposition MPs have warned that the parliamentary hearings amount to a CBC-bashing exercise and a possible prelude to deeply damaging budget cuts at the broadcaster.

“James Moore has been as articulate defending public broadcasting as anybody I know,” says Ian Morrison, spokesman for Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, an advocacy group that calls itself a watchdog for Canadian programming.

But he quickly adds: “There’s more than one James Moore. He’s a hydra-headed creature.”

At the same time, CBC bosses are exhibiting increased anxiety about the potential impact of the access battle on the corporation’s federal funding, amounts that ultimately will be determined by a government populated by numerous Conservative MPs who have been critical of CBC spending for years and, more recently, outspoken about its alleged secrecy.

“Quebecor’s coverage of the public broadcaster includes repeated calls to cut CBC/Radio-Canada’s funding, based on errors of fact on our accountability,” CBC vice-president of communications and corporate affairs, Bill Chambers, told Postmedia News.

CBC president Hubert Lacroix, who is scheduled to appear Nov. 1 before the Commons committee on access-to-information issues, has also aired concerns about the attacks by Quebecor media outlets, suggesting in an interview last week that “every time they create doubt about us” for “their advantage,” it leads to a weakened CBC and can “influence people” to shrink the public broadcaster’s budget.

Quebecor has steadfastly denied such motives, justifying its campaign to open up CBC’s internal files as an example of probing, taxpayer-conscious journalism that’s shedding light on a cloistered, big-spending and insufficiently accountable public agency.

The CBC, in turn, has argued that since coming under the provisions of access-to-information rules in 2007, the corporation has responded reasonably promptly to many requests, but also has resisted others for fear of divulging potentially valuable commercial information to its competitors — principally Quebecor’s television stations.

— Postmedia News

CBC by the numbers

— Source: CBC

$1.16 billion

Federal funding for 2010/2011

$650 million

Advertising and other revenues

64%

Percentage of CBC revenues from taxpayers

7,285

Full-time employees, CBC and Radio-Canada

‘At least 5%’ and ‘at least 10 %’

Two budget-cut scenarios being prepared by CBC

1 million

CBC audio podcasts downloaded per month

82%

Proportion of Canadian content on CBC and Radio-Canada prime-time schedule

9.3%

CBC prime-time audience share, English Canada

20%

Radio-Canada prime-time audience share, French Canada

75

Number of years since the creation of the CBC in 1936

14.7%

CBC radio audience share (Radio 1 plus Radio 2)