Source : Globe & Mail

by Graham Fraser

Ottawa – Canadians like the CBC, think it's fulfilling its mandate and is doing a good job – but believe the Liberal government wants to cut and reduce its size rather than preserve and build it.

These are the findings of a national COMPAS poll commissioned by the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting and released here yesterday, less than a week before hearings begin at the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission on the CBC's licence renewal application.

"In the context of recent history, these findings are quite remarkable," Friends' spokesman Ian Morrison told a news conference yesterday, pointing out that the poll showed that Canadians have strong and positive views about the CBC.

"Since the 1993 election, the CBC has laboured under a cloud," he said.  "It has become quite clear that the Prime Minister harbours a considerable grudge against the editorial work of the CBC. 

Of course, Chrétien is hardly the first politician to complain about media coverage; he’s just the first prime minister since Mackenzie King created the CBC in 1936 to make retribution a policy rather than a whim.

Of those polled, 82 per cent said that the CBC is doing a good job, a very good job or an excellent job of fulfilling its mandate, while 4 per cent said the CBC is doing a poor job.

"Whether it has been the punitive budget cuts to the CBC, the Milewski affair [in which the Prime Minister’s Office accused CBC reporter Terry Milewski of bias, unsuccessfully], or the threat of even greater political interference through last year’s Bill C-44 [which would have given the government authority to remove the CBC president at will], the fact is that this Prime Minister’s hostility to the CBC is not supported by the electorate," Morrison said. "I suspect it would be fair to say that it’s been a long time since most governments and most government enterprises have been able to report that only 4 percent of Canadians believed they were doing a poor job."

According to the poll, 52 per cent of those questioned picked the CBC as the most balanced in its coverage of Canada’s federal political parties, 28 per cent picked CTV and 8 per cent picked Canwest Global.

In response to questions about whether they thought the government intended to preserve and rebuild the CBC or cut its budget, 61 per cent said they believe the government is committed to cutting the CBC and downsizing it, and 23 per cent said it is committed to preserving and rebuilding the public broadcaster.

But one of the questions asked how they would respond if their member of Parliament asked for advice on a vote on what to do about CBC funding. Of those polled, 38 per cent said that funding for the CBC should be increased, 51 per cent said it should be maintained, and 8 per cent said there should be further budget reductions. Broken down on the basis of political support, 91 per cent of Liberal voters said that CBC funding should be maintained or increased, 74 per cent of Reform voters, 92 per cent of Bloc Québécois voters, 96 per cent of NDP voters, and 92 per cent of Progressive Conservative voters.

The poll also asked whether people believed appointments to the CBC’s board of directors were made to reward political friends and financial contributors, or on the basis of merit. Of those polled, 51 per cent saw the appointments as political rewards, and 33 per cent said they were based on merit.

In an interview, Morrison said that the poll is consistent with previous polls that COMPAS has done over the past six years for Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.

"The bottom line is that 80 per cent of Canadians deep down agree with us as to the value of the CBC," he said.

One change from previous polls, he said, is the degree to which Canadians support increasing funding for the CBC – which reflects a sea change in the way the public now thinks about the need to provide resources for public institutions.

The poll was conducted by telephone between May 1 and 7; 1,004 Canadians over 18 were interviewed, producing a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

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