C18 Circus: Trudeau Is Here To Help Make Everything Worse-- Again

Breaking: CBC now says that following a review of its journalism, its sources could not confirm the existence of alleged emails between Danielle Smith’s office and prosecutors. Smith says she feels "vindicated" after CBC News previously claimed the Alberta premier’s office directly emailed Crown prosecutors about criminal cases against participants in the 2022 Coutts protests.

On a recent trip to PEI, we ended up at a beach party with a local farmer whose land rolls down to Northumberland Strait. He lives on a lovely property that has been in the family for seven generations. As he pointed out across the water we could see the tanned, powerful hands. 

But John is also a retired, longtime CBC News reporter based in Charlottetown. When he was working CBC had people like John at all their regional and local stations. People who knew and understood the communities they covered. Who knew the names and histories of the politicians. Who looked upon their coverage area as a destination, not a stepping stone to greater personal glory. 

When we arrived at CBC Toronto in 1983 it was a place of grownups. Almost none of the people we worked with— Peter Mansbridge, Hilary Brown, Joe Coté, Jim Curran, Bill Copps. Bill Harrington, Stu Patterson and many more— had PhDs in journalism. Many, like us, were university products but, outside of writing record reviews for the college paper, hadn’t studied for the job of reporting and conveying the news. 

Many, like John, came to the job through other paths. We were men and women who came from somewhere, who’d worked at something else, who’d maybe spun records late at night at a private station, and that informed our work. It gave CBC an authenticity it badly lacks today. 

Watching a recent Charlottetown six o’clock broadcast we saw veteran weather broadcaster Jay Scotland, who moved from the Big Smoke in Toronto to a simpler life on PEI. But the rest of the on-air employees were all under 35, the perky puppets of the current CBC’s regime. Judging by the accents they were CFA (come from away).

They see PEI as one step on the road to Toronto HQ. So what if the Corp loses its ears and eyes in the regions that it receives billions to reflect? Taking the company cheque and the top-down progressive company narratives comes first now. We can’t blame the reporters and hosts. In the words of Bruce Hornsby, that’s just the wait is.

But viewers have noticed. CBC has been hemorrhaging advertising money and viewers for a decade. Revenues have sunk like the Titanic (that met its icy doom northeast of John’s beach). Only about three percent of Canadians say CBC is their primary TV source, now— and much of that is for Hockey Night In Canada. In some major Canadian cities the supper-hour audience is measured in the hundreds. Requiring the government to counterintuitively pump more money— it’s promising $400 M for the drifting ship to make up for lost advertising. 

Oh, and they renewed the contract of the executive director at the helm— the one who lives in NYC— for another five years. 

CBC apologists will say all conventional networks are having the same problems. True. CTV is begging for permission to drop its local reporting requirements from CRTC. Ditto CITY TV and Global. They face a future that will see them merge to keep one for two alive. 

This is why the geniuses of the Trudeau cabinet have passed C-18 that seeks to soak the large multinational tech outlets like Twitter and Meta operating in Canada for the dollars to prop up these disasters. Despite warnings from the tech sectors the Liberal/ NDP buddies shoved this potâge through Parliament, limiting debate and input from those who see this as yet another #TrudeauBlunder. 

According to hapless Heritage minister Pablo Rodriguez the CRTC will now decide which Canadian outlets are pure enough in thought and deed to receive the government’s lucre. Naturally, these Big Tech operations told Trudeau Inc. to go have intercourse with its hat. Leaving the Liberal Choir to splutter about alt-right and disinformation. (They now say they’ll pull their unreadable advertising from the sites.)

Apparently the only ones who couldn’t see this outcome from shaking down Facebook and Meta were Trudeau and his faculty lounge of mediocrities like Rodriguez. They are left with an unworkable solution to a problem that the market should have been left to correct. Maybe Pierre Poilievre will follow through on his promise to end all this. Maybe not.

But if we are to be stuck with CBC and its bloated budgets perhaps fine-tuning the mandate is in order. TVO provides a focussed public-broadcaster model. Get CBC out of the news gathering and opinion business at the national level. Restore vibrancy to the regions. Make CBC radio stick to its knitting in its communities, following its general audience not leading them. Get out of making Hollywood entertainment clones that are as Canadian as Rodeo Drive.

And look outside the institutional journalism schools for talent. The factories that produce the wee willing workers are polluted by the insanity of the schools in which they reside. Hire someone who’s worked doing rebar, slung breakfast in a hash house or tilled the soil in the nation. You’ll be surprised by what you might learn. 

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UPDATE: Trudeau is now comparing his battle with Big Tech to Canadian soldiers fighting and dying in WW !!. His pomposity knows no bounds.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx