From the Friends of the CBC
The full brunt of Stephen Harper’s hostility to our CBC is now in full view.
Today is a very bad day for those of us – and that includes the vast majority of Canadians -- who believe in and support public broadcasting.
Please stand with me now in support of public broadcasting and to hold Harper accountable for what he has done.
Earlier today, the CBC announced it faces a $130 million shortfall. This is largely the consequence of Harper’s punitive cuts to the CBC’s budget which as of April 1st are now fully phased in.
As a result, the creative energy of 657 CBC people who make programs will be lost to our national public broadcaster and the damage to every program CBC audiences see and hear will be obvious. Sadly, the layoffs will be concentrated among CBC’s younger, digitally savvy staff with less seniority.
Harper is attacking our CBC from the outside. But he also has an insidious strategy to undermine our national public broadcaster from within.
Seven years ago, Harper handed the reins to our most important cultural institution to someone with no senior level broadcasting or management experience whatsoever.
That lack of experience is now painfully clear to see as the CBC – knowing this day would come – has failed to prepare.
CBC’s President Hubert Lacroix owes his job to Harper and, as Harper’s man inside the CBC, appears to us to be doing the Prime Minister’s bidding.
Public broadcasting in Canada desperately needs your help right now.
Please help FRIENDS mount a major campaign to hold Harper accountable and to deter the next attack, which is looming on the horizon.
Harper's fingerprints can also been seen in a Senate Committee study of “challenges facing the CBC” that has turned into a campaign to strip all public funding from the CBC and give that money to the private broadcasters.
This is nothing less than a trial balloon straight from Harper that must be shot down immediately. We need your help now to expose this chicanery to public scrutiny.
Just days ago, Senator Leo Housakos, the Conservative Vice-Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications – a man with close ties to Prime Minister Harper – placed this agenda firmly on the Committee’s plate.
Here is the question Housakos asked at the Committee’s hearing on last Tuesday:
“Is there a way to take the money we spend right now on a broadcaster (the CBC) and re-route that money to give that $1 billion-plus dollars to filmmakers and producers of Canadian content so they can make quality content and films? Once they make that quality Canadian content, wouldn’t there be an easier appeal made to the private broadcasters to start running it more.”
Click here to read the full preamble to the above question.
Although the Senator posed this question on the morning of April 1st, this was clearly no April Fool.
So here, in a nutshell, are the ideas of a close confidant of the Prime Minister:
• Kill CBC Radio and Television
• Give the money to private producers
• Hand over the programs to private broadcasters
Two months ago I appeared before the Committee on your behalf. I was invited as a witness on February 4th at the outset of the Committee’s study.
Thinking back to my own encounter with the Conservative Senators that day, I can now see where they are going.
After my presentation, Conservative Senator Don Plett asked me “I believe you have posted a petition asking the government to increase funding” for the CBC. “How much funding should the government give the CBC?” Then, leaning forward in his chair, Plett added, “I am not sure that I support giving them funding”.
So, at the very beginning of an eighteen month study, Senator Plett – a former President of the Canadian Alliance Party and the founding President of the Conservative Party of Canada, rewarded in 2009 by Stephen Harper with a Senate appointment – had apparently already made up his mind that CBC should get no funds!
I left that meeting wondering if the dice were not loaded against public broadcasting on a Committee made up of eight Conservative and three Liberal senators.
We need your help to keep a very close eye on these folks, to expose their hostility to public broadcasting, and to connect the dots to Stephen Harper.
Make no mistake: this is Harper’s latest attack on our national public broadcaster. Please help us fund this campaign today.
This is the strongest attack on public broadcasting in Parliament since its creation under Prime Minister R. B. Bennett in the depths of the Great Depression!
Best regards!
Ian Morrison
Spokesperson
FRIENDS of Canadian Broadcasting
PS: Here is a chart which shows the purchasing power in current 2014 dollars of the federal government’s annual grant to the CBC since 1990. It speaks for itself!
Reader Tips - Small Dead Animals
* a tear
Katewerk @katewerk