CBC head calls for a ‘national conversation’ on Conservatives’ pledge to defund

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This article was published 29/01/2025 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA – With U.S. President Donald Trump making “territorial claims,” the new head of CBC says defunding the public broadcaster could erode a pillar of Canada’s cultural identity.

Marie-Philippe Bouchard, CEO of CBC-Radio-Canada, is calling for a “national conversation” on the Conservative promise to defund, and is launching a tour to get it started.

She made the comments in a wide-ranging interview with The Canadian Press, covering defunding, controversy over executive bonuses and the CBC’s digital offerings.

Bouchard said it’s important for Canadians to be equipped with the facts about the likely impacts of stripping away CBC’s funding for English-language services.

She said they should consider how it would affect “not only the service that we provide but also the existence, sometimes the viability, of a lot of other pieces of our economy from a cultural and journalistic perspective and how that would help Canadians as they face the world today.”

That includes “discussions about tariffs, discussions about maybe territorial claims by the new American president.”

She questioned whether it would help Canada to take away “that component of our identity.”

Bouchard said she’s also “not sure we’re having that conversation at the level that we should be having at this point, as we progress towards an election in 2025.”

Asked whether she plans to initiate that conversation, Bouchard said she’s appearing at a production industry conference later this week. “That’s the first piece of the plan to initiate these conversations,” she said.

After that, Bouchard will tour Western Canada to engage with business and civic leaders, industry representatives, CBC audiences and employees.

She said the Conservative pledge to cut a billion dollars from CBC’s government funding and maintain only francophone news wouldn’t work because there wouldn’t be enough money left to run a viable French-language service.

“Cutting a billion dollars out of the CBC appropriation would cripple both English and French services,” she said. “It’s not possible mathematically to come to the conclusion that you can siphon out a billion dollars … and think that we can remain intact.”

Bouchard said there are also other people she expects to take a public position on the impact of defunding. “It’s a matter of values to some extent, but it’s also a matter of concrete impact, economic and otherwise.”

Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge recently said Elon Musk’s “meddling” in politics and recent changes at Meta to eliminate fact-checking make the pledge to defund even more consequential. 

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said in a recent interview with the Toronto Sun he would be “very quick” to follow through on his promise if he was elected to government. 

He argued the English media market in Canada is big enough to sustain itself without a public broadcaster, but that isn’t true for the French-language market. 

“Let the media make money by winning eyeballs and earlobes like it should be in a free country,” he said.

In 2023-24, CBC/Radio-Canada received $1.44 billion from the federal government and generated $493.5 million in revenue.

Damien Kurek, the Conservative critic for Canadian Heritage, said in a statement Wednesday that Poilievre has been having a “national conversation” with Canadians about defunding the CBC for years.

“Common sense Conservatives will defund the CBC while preserving funding to ensure francophone Canadians continue to receive news services,” Kurek said.

The Conservatives have also been attacking the public broadcaster over executive bonuses. 

The CBC/Radio-Canada board of directors approved over $18.4 million in bonuses for nearly 1,200 employees, managers and executives for the 2023-24 fiscal year after the broadcaster eliminated hundreds of jobs. Bouchard’s predecessor, Catherine Tait, came under fire over the issue, including for not ruling out accepting a bonus herself.

In the interview, Bouchard did not say she would refuse to accept a bonus, saying the conversation has not been about her. 

She said the issue will “come to a conclusion in the next couple of months” when she receives the report of an independent study that was commissioned on the question.

“I will be discussing with the board what is the way forward, to consider all the elements and come up with a plan.”

Asked why she wouldn’t proactively refuse a bonus to deflate the criticism, Bouchard said she wants to get to the “root of the problem.”

“I think the bigger issue is that we made a promise as an organization that we would look at our performance pay program based on expert advice, and that we would come to a determination … how to go forward, and that is the short-order issue that I want to get at.”

CBC has invested in digital offerings like its CBC Gem service to offset industry-wide declines in traditional broadcasting.

Bouchard said in order to keep Canadians subscribing, it’s important to make sure those services meet their expectations, such as having a flexible model where those who are watching for free are served advertisements, but those ads aren’t shown to paid subscribers. 

“It also is important to provide them with an environment that is personalized,” she said.

“It’s a matter of quality of the experience that we’re offering and we want to stay current with other platforms that are giving viewers that flexibility.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 29, 2025.