During this election campaign, a CBC News reporter overheard and then broke the story of the juvenile tricks by two Liberal partisans to make fake buttons that would make the Conservatives look bad. The CBC also went after Liberal Leader Mark Carney mercilessly on the Paul Chiang affair. Most Liberals would argue they got a rough ride from the public broadcaster.

Yet, Carney is talking about giving CBC/Radio-Canada more money while Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is talking about defunding the Crown corporation. 

I published a report on the future of CBC/Radio-Canada just before the federal election began in late March, which drew from a debate in the Senate on the future of CBC/Radio-Canada, and hearings at a Senate committee on local programming by the public broadcaster.  

In early April, Carney issued the Liberal plan on the subject. I would like to believe the party read my report, but suffice it to say we place a similar value on the national public broadcaster, as do apparently some 80 per cent of Canadians.

I called it an “essential service.”  The Liberals called it a “reliable Canadian public forum in a sea of misinformation.”

I wanted to see no budget cuts, while Carney has promised a modest increase, now with the possibility of much more following a review. Keep in mind that the Conservative position is to see a cut of $1-billion, defunding the English-language service, and keeping what will then be an impoverished French-language Radio-Canada.  

I am of the view that public broadcasting has a very specific and important role in a democracy. It builds and enhances our national identity through its news and entertainment programming, providing a place for national dialogue, for hearing about each other, and generally advancing a sense of culture and national identity, and as such, sovereignty.  

As most print and broadcast news media in Canada have been falling away—or dying outright—the online world is nowhere near taking its place. The CBC ends up being the de facto guardian of free and fair media.  

Just think of this: if we let it go, the last source of media about Canada will be from X, owned by Elon Musk, who doesn’t believe we should be a country. Does that not make us a little more like the 51^st state?

The CBC is not perfect, but it does many things well, and should to do a lot more better. Rather than cancelling this national communications icon, in a democracy we have the ability to redefine and refocus it in light of the ever-changing sense of our nationhood and the fast-evolving communications technology. It really isn’t that difficult if we agree on where it needs to go.

There are many things the CBC can do differently, but these are five that I think are important, and were the core of my Senate report:

• Focus on the core objectives, which include building the Canadian nationhood, being accurate and reliable, and being tech savvy in a constantly evolving field. 
• Reform and reorganize within the same budget. If any party wants to offer more funds, I’m all for it, but not having such an increase must not preclude the much-needed change.
• Manage perceived bias, which has always been an issue for the CBC. It’s been called too right, too left, too woke, too old-fashioned, too white, too Indigenous, too central Canada, too separatist, too federalist, etc. That is to be expected as it tries to reflect the complexity of this country, so this is an issue that the public broadcaster has to work on transparently and constantly.
• A need for more local programming. This is a call that comes from across the country, and is necessary not only for the people in each region, but also for us to hear from each other.
• Sharing content, especially news and current affairs—for free—with other traditional and especially online media is an issue that we need to consider.

More than ever, CBC/Radio-Canada is an essential service. It’s essential to our sense of nationhood and pride, and to creating better communications among Canadians. It’s essential in this new world of disappearing traditional media, and the rapid growth of disinformation in online media. There is a definite need to refocus and reform the public broadcaster, but a failure to preserve it would remove a cornerstone of our country when we need to build it up.  

Letting go of the public broadcaster would allow for the complete domination by America of our communications system. 

My plea to the Liberals, New Democrats, and Greens is to put forward bold ideas about the future of the public broadcaster.

My plea to the Conservatives and People’s Party is to please reconsider your policies on CBC/Radio-Canada, especially in light of the existential threat we face in this country. 

Andrew Cardozo is an independent Senator for Ontario, and member of the Progressive Senate Group. He is a past commissioner at the CRTC.

The Hill Times