The CBC gets federal cash — but so do its MP critics By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, Apr. 18, 2023

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/04/2023 (932 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Here’s what Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre wrote on Twitter on Sunday: “BREAKING: CBC officially exposed as ‘government-funded media.’ Now people know that it is Trudeau propaganda, not news.”

Mr. Poilievre’s post came after he requested, earlier in April, that the CBC be identified that way. Twitter acquiesced, adding the line on the main CBC Twitter site.

Is that proof, as Mr. Poilievre charges, that CBC has been “officially exposed” as propaganda? Well, no. If you accept a line on Twitter as official proof of anything, your research skills are truly challenged.

The only thing people know from the addition of that line is that Twitter’s off-in-all-directions owner has made the decision to identify the CBC that way — on a website whose owner now seems determined to diminish its own value. As a result, on Monday, CBC announced it was “pausing” its Twitter presence.

The CBC receives a budgetary appropriation of $1.24 billion from the federal government to act as the nation’s public broadcaster. That means the largest share of CBC revenues come from the government. But it has its own board of directors, and operates at arm’s length from federal control.

Can you make an argument that, corporately, the CBC might be a little more fond of a government that pays into the CBC than it is of an opposition that wants to defund it? Of course you can.

But does the connection mean the CBC toes a government line and writes what it is told? Of course not: the CBC has been getting a subsidy for decades, under different administrations.

The “government-funded media” label clearly implies the money is being paid for a direct effect, or in exchange for some kind of control over the CBC’s editorial output. (In the U.S., National Public Radio — NPR — was given the same treatment by Twitter. NPR left the social media platform as a result.)

Back in November, 2022, the federal government announced $22.7 million in spending to support the expansion of 16 business ventures in Manitoba: if those ventures have Twitter accounts, should their accounts now carry the line “government-funded business”?

Or think of it in still another way: Saskatchewan MP and former Conservative Party of Canada leader Andrew Scheer jumped on Twitter on Sunday with a triumphant tweet of “There it is!” and marked the new “government-funded media” line in CBC’s Twitter profile with an uneven red line.

Mr. Scheer has been the member of Parliament for Regina-Qu’Appelle since 2004. As is only fair, he is paid by the Canadian taxpayer. An MP’s base salary is $194,600 — Mr. Scheer is also Opposition house leader, which carries an additional salary of $48,000.

In three months, from Oct. 1, 2022 to Dec. 31, 2022, his own expenditure reports spell out that he spent over $120,000 on employee salaries, travel, hospitality and on contracts, all of it money that came from federal taxpayers.

You can argue that money came from the operational funding provided to the House of Commons, rather than the federal government, but in the end, probably the largest share of Mr. Scheer’s income is taxpayers’ money, just like the CBC’s $1.24-billion subsidy, is taxpayers’ money.

So, as a result, should Mr. Scheer — and Mr. Poilievre, for that matter — have now earned a notation on their Twitter accounts saying “government-funded politician,” given how many years they’ve subsisted on government money?

No. No one would argue they are tools of the current Liberal government.

Certainly, Messrs. Scheer and Poilievre would not make that argument about themselves — though they do appear to be quite willing to make it for others.