So, I am totally behind on my blogging, but here is a letter I wrote that was published in an abbreviated form in the Ottawa's Hill Times Online (
I had originally intended this post to be a Letter to The Editor of The Hill Times Online in response to Shelia Copps’ article of Nov. 21st, and her stirring defence of the CBC in her weekly Copps’ Corner column (http://www.hilltimes.com/copps-corner/2011/11/21/an-attack-on-cbc-is-an-attack-on-canadian-culture/28848). After being advised by one of Canada’s “top 5 political minds” (www.gerrynicholls.com) who generously takes the time to answer my newbie-type questions to keep such a letter to about 250 words, I gave up on the letter idea. There was just no way to do justice to an article of such heroic fiction in so few words.
When I originally saw the title, I wasn’t sure if Ms. Copps was attempting to expand her post-political media endeavors to now include writing fiction (a title like “An Attack On CBC Is An Attack On Canadian Culture” does make one wonder). After reading her piece, which turns Hubert Lacroix, the embattled CBC President, into some media equivalent of Gandhi, one would think that much like the beloved Bapu, Lacroix stands valiantly rallying his countrymen against a flood of Imperialism wishing to crush the culture he so zealously defends.
If I wasn’t convinced she was serious, I would suggest that the piece be nominated for a Governor General’s Award for best fiction, because Ms. Copps’ heroic portrayal of Lacroix does indeed show an imaginative, creative flair that is worthy of distinction. She is, however, indisputably correct in one thing: while Lacroix may well be zealously defending a culture, it’s not the Canadian one; it’s the culture that has allowed a publicly funded broadcaster to be a parasite on the Canadian taxpayers with what can charitably be described as limited accountability.
The CBC has come under fire from both it’s paymaster, the Canadian Government, and their competitors, chiefly the private broadcaster Quebecor. The state funded broadcaster has steadfastly refused to open it’s books to even the Information Commissioner, the Official who supposedly is in place to ensure individual and public rights to information. Bad enough that Lacroix proclaims accountability despite going to great lengths to not disclose how the money is spent; how often does an employer have to get a Federal Court Ruling to find out where his employee has been spending $1.1B put annually in his trust? The fact he does so while simultaneously attacking Quebecor on grounds that they too, receive federal funding and unlike the CBC, have no accountability is laughable. The way that Ms. Copps not only glosses this misrepresentation over, but endorses Lacroix and the CBC in doing so, is completely irresponsible.
Lack of accountability has long been the major beef that those of us who call for the privatisation of the CBC hold. In her article, Ms. Copps makes passing reference to another former CBC president who was on hand for the hearings, Tony Manera. You may recall, Mr. Manera quit his two-year stint as President of the state owned broadcaster when the Chretien government of 1995—of which, Ms. Copps served as Deputy PM—realizing it was near a massive financial crisis, announced sweeping reductions in government spending, which of course, effected the CBC, no doubt making Mr. Manera’s job appreciably more challenging. What Ms. Copps fails to mention, is that somehow, despite the Chretien’s Scrooge-like treatment of the Holy Grail of Canadian Culture (you know, the one that under the aforementioned St. Lacroix’s watch hired a former leader of a party who’s sole purpose was to separate Quebec from that Canadian Culture), the CBC has somehow managed to survive and apparently thrive (if that figure of generating $3.70 for every dollar invested is to be believed) some 16 years later. What she also chooses to ignore, is that the cuts in government spending that extended well beyond the CBC have been the biggest factor in partially shielding—for now at least—Canada from much of the current global economic crisis. (I find this particularly odd; rather than taking credit for being a key member of the government that helped avert much of the worst of a global meltdown, one wonders if Ms. Copps regrets the decisions that were made to keep us from default. Perhaps I should find this more “telling” then “odd”).
I am no Quebecor apologist; I am however, an unapologetic lover of fair, free markets and open competition, which benefits not only consumers, but encourages producers of goods to produce the highest quality they can at reasonable prices. Because of a protectionist government policy, the CBC has never had to endure the demands of doing either.
While it is true that like the CBC, Quebecor’s TVA network receives millions from the Canadian Media Fund, the private company’s Videotron arm pays more into it than TVA gets back. In other words, the Canadian Government picks Quebecor’s right pocket, counts out a rather large sum of the company’s earned cash, and then, as an act of sheer benevolence, puts some—but not quite all—of it back in the left pocket, and likely waits for the thank you card from the company it plundered. In contrast to Quebecor, the CBC pays nothing to the CMF, however it does receive the same benefits.
Of course, a far too simple solution would be to stop taking the money in the first place, and then there would be no need for the subsidy later. However, this may do something horrific, like level the playing field and encourage an open market, where any company that wishes to compete must do what all companies do: be accountable to those who invested in them. And it is painfully obvious that this is a result the CBC, it’s steward Mr. Lacroix, and evangelical apologists like Ms. Copps desperately wish to avoid.
To suggest that the citizens who fund the CBC—many of us, against our will—are against Canadian Culture for demanding accountability is insulting. Shamefully for Ms. Copps, it’s the same tactic her hated enemies, the Conservatives, employ as they proclaim that those of us opposed to their Draconian Crime Bill (otherwise known as C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act), are somehow silently cheering for your kids to become crack-addicts. The strands can be found around the world; opposition to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan meant that those who opposed such actions clearly were in favour of the despots and terrorists that ruled the nations we were engaging. No Ms. Copps, we are not anti-Canadian. Just the opposite; we seek to make a country we love a better place, and unless governments and the offices they sponsor become accountable, that will never happen.
If Ms. Copps is truly serious about reviving her almost dead political party as it’s next President, perhaps she should kick over some sacred cows that politicians of every persuasion, not just Liberal, have disguised as “Canadian Institutions” and have the courage and integrity to speak out against the waste they previously birthed and raised, whose consequences we now see.
Now that would be an attack on Canadian Culture, at least as we have come to know it in the political sphere.
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