Well, at the very most, we’re 13 months away from the next federal election, and hopefully sooner. Justin Trudeau’s Heritage Minister, Pascale St-Onge says Canadians love CBC and it’s only Pierre Poilievre who doesn’t like it.
But CBC’s ratings, which have been falling for years, tell a very different story.
Heritage minister claims Canadians love CBC, except for Pierre Poilievre.
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St-Onge posted a video to social media defending CBC, which won’t help the perception that when it comes to politics, CBC is the network of the Liberal Party.
“CBC, let’s talk about it,” St-Onge says in the video. “Canadians grew up with it. One politician clearly missed out.”
The video then cuts to a clip of a rally of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre where he talks about saving $1 billion by defunding CBC.
Poilievre’s promise to defund CBC is incredibly popular with his voters and always draws one of the loudest applause lines at his packed rallies.
St-Onge claims that this is just loud talk about “destroying” CBC and points to a poll from Spark Advocacy – owned by Bruce Anderson, a man with close ties to the Trudeau government – to back up the claim.
The poll she points to was conducted at the end of last year and asked people which of the following statements about CBC was closest to their viewpoint – 41% said CBC is important and should continue, 35% said they want CBC but with plenty of change while 24% said CBC is no longer needed. It’s an interesting poll and shows that a majority either don’t want CBC or if they want it, the believe it needs to change.
What the poll didn’t ask was whether CBC should be defunded.
Poilievre’s actual plan is to defund CBC in English – he has no plans to touch Radio-Canada, which is still highly popular in Quebec.
Defunding CBC doesn’t mean it would necessarily go away, but it wouldn’t get the massive government subsidies it does now.
A poll released in July 2023 by the
Angus Reid Institute showed 36% of Canadians agreed with the statement that the government “should completely defund the CBC” compared to 47% who disagreed and 17% who said they did not know.
That’s a significant portion of Canadians agreeing CBC should lose its funding. The poll was also taken before CBC started announcing job cuts while also handing out bonuses, a move the vast majority of Canadians disagreed with.
