Source : Ottawa Citizen

The Tories are the only party to mention the CBC in their platform, but what do they actually intend to do about it? CHRIS COBB looks at what a Conservative victory might mean for the public broadcaster and its billion public dollars

"English language (CBC) television has tended to become more commercial, more in direct competition with private television and more driven to use American programming to attract advertising dollars — an approach which does not appear to be successful. We should seek to reduce CBC's dependence on advertising revenue and its competition with the private sector for these valuable dollars …" 
  — Conservative leader Stephen Harper, Nov. 29, 2004.

If the winter winds of change blow the Harper Conservatives into office tomorrow, the chill will be felt most acutely at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The Liberal government, especially the Chrétien Liberals, approached the taxpayer-financed public broadcaster with moods that swung from the outright hostile to the grudgingly indifferent. If past Conservative rhetoric is any guide, Harper's government will fundamentally overhaul the corporation, reduce its budget — currently approaching $1-billion in taxpayer funds — and, fear CBC supporters, bust down CBC-TV to something that resembles PBS or TV-Ontario.

Conservative MP Bev Oda, a former broadcaster and former member of federal broadcast regulatory body CRTC, is an obvious choice for Heritage minister if she and her party win. She says Conservatives are committed to the CBC and consider it an integral part of the Canadian fabric.

Before the election, Oda was pushing for a task force to review the CBC's mandate and criticized the broadcaster for its lack of accountability and long-term vision.

It's unlikely CBC Radio — noncommercial, essential and well regarded by millions of Canadians — will be affected, at least directly.

That the Conservatives are generally unhappy with CBC-TV, and especially its reliance on commercial revenue, is certain. What they intend to do about it is less so. Their campaign literature contains a few generalities but no specifics, which is one up on the other parties, whose platforms don't mention the CBC at all.

In his speech to the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) a little more than two years ago, Conservative leader Stephen Harper addressed an audience of private broadcasters who have long claimed the CBC has lost its compass, a group that has lobbied for the corporation to be forced out of commercial television. With an ever-expanding and competitive TV market, they argue, advertising revenue is scarce enough without "privates" having to compete with the public, taxpayer-supported broadcaster for a share of the pie.

For its part, the CBC has argued that budget cuts — more than $400-million under the Chrétien Liberals but now partially restored — have left it little choice. Taxpayers fund half of CBC-TV's $650 million annual budget; the rest comes from ad revenue and program sales.

But CBC's current upper management led by Liberal-appointed president Robert Rabinovitch has been out of favour with MPs of all parties because of his handling of the summer-long lockout of CBC's unionized employees last year.

The lockout was effectively brought to an end by MPs who had spent the summer listening to complaints about lack of CBC service from constituents. When Rabinovitch appeared before the all-party House of Commons Heritage committee to explain himself last fall, the hostility was palpable.

And Harper takes the side of the private broadcasters, or appears to. In that CAB speech, he said: "We believe that CBC English-language television should become, and will have to become, more distinctive if it is to remain viable and fulfil its role as a unique public broadcaster. In terms of foreign content, CBC should concentrate on non-North American international programming that tends to be under-represented in the system."

The National Citizens Coalition, a think-tank Harper headed from 1998 to 2002, may offer another, albeit more extreme clue. In its policy book "Agenda for Canada" the Coalition says: "The CBC costs taxpayers about $1 billion a year, yet its audience share continues to dwindle. Are taxpayers getting their money's worth? In this age of the Internet and cable TV and a thousand-channel universe do we really need a government-run network? The answer to both questions is no. Maybe the government should get out of the broadcast business. Sell off the CBC to the public and to its employees. Privatize the CBC."

Although official Conservative policy on the CBC, such as it is, has never gone that far, star Conservative candidate Peter Kent, a former Global TV anchorman and executive running in a tight Toronto race, has been outspoken about the corporation.

"While I believe, passionately, that Canada needs a strong, publicly funded national broadcaster," Kent wrote in a letter to the Toronto Star, "CBCTV does not need increased funding. The sorry state of the corporation today is a direct result of a chronic, misdirected fixation on its original 1950s era mandate to provide a spectrum of local and regional television services that are irrelevant in today's multichannel world … the corporation needs to be unbundled — broken into divisions that focus entirely on a strictly national service."

The uncertainty and lack of clear answers, troubles the Canadian Media Guild, which represents 5,500 CBC employees. CBC, which fears it will be seen as self-serving, does not allow its reporters covering the election to ask questions about the corporation unless the subject is raised by others or becomes part of the campaign agenda.

"It appears to me we're looking at the shrinking of Ottawa," says guild president Lise Lareau. "It appears Harper is moving toward a federal government that does a small basket of things, such as national defence, and it's unclear to me the degree to which he views culture as a federal priority. So we are being forced to read tea leaves."

Lareau says budget cuts and lack of long-term, increased financial commitment from the federal government, and last year's NHL lockout, have reduced CBC-TV's capacity to be distinct from private broadcasters.

"The CBC took out so many from local CBC television in the 1990s that it hasn't been competitive in the local field," said Lareau. "These little halfhour shows attached to Canada Now are staffed by a handful of people and they aren't able to do the public service broadcasting they used to do. I doubt the private sector is feeling too much heat from the CBC in the regions any more."

But, concedes Lareau, CBC-TV's reliance on commercial revenue has muddied the picture for many Canadians. "You argue whether the CBC made a poor decision moving into the advertising game the way it did," she said. "Unfortunately, I think it makes it less distinctive to Canadians, so it's sometimes harder for them to know what they're standing up for when they stand up for the CBC. But television is a very expensive medium and if it can't be funded properly, and as it should be, through public sources, you need the advertising revenue. That's why CBC Radio stands apart the way it does. There are no commercials and it's very different."

"My worry is that the Conservatives will see CBC-TV as vulnerable and use nice language like they want CBC to be ‘PBS or TVO-style,' which has a nice veneer to it but it means a lot smaller. It means no local newsgathering and no network. It means a lot more current affairs with talking heads and less reporting from the field. And worse."

Because only the Conservatives mentioned the CBC in their platform, the Media Guild wrote to individual candidates of all three major parties, which says Lareau, brought more and varied responses from Conservatives than any other party. Many of the Conservative responses were "boiler plate" policy statements dictated by Conservative headquarters but, says Laureau, others deviated from party lines and were ‘thoughtful.'

"Few Liberals responded," she said, "and that is a sign to me that the party is tired. They basically said 'our record speaks for itself.' And the NDP candidates we contacted all thought the CBC was in their platform until we told them it wasn't. But despite the Conservative responses we still don't know how they're going to approach it."

Ian Morrison, spokesman for the watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, says he is worried by the Conservative party line.

"What their candidates are being told is troubling," said Ian Morrison, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting spokesman.

"You can see it being the end of professional sports on CBC-TV, although they don't say it. The good news is that public opinion is on the side of the CBC and the Conservatives know that."

Morrison predicts the pro-CBC bent of Canadians will dampen the more radical anti-CBC sentiment among Conservatives. Otherwise, he said, "they will have a hell of a fight on their hands."

© Ottawa Citizen