CBC’s Surreal Task: Report on the Guy Who Wants It Dead

Pity the poor CBC reporter this campaign, tasked with the sacred trust of objective reporting.

You have Prime Minister Mark Carney promising a $150-million boost to the CBC budget.

And you have Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, avowed enemy of the CBC, who has promised to defund the public broadcaster (well, the English-speaking side of it) and is refusing to take questions from its reporters.

One wants to pay your rent; one wants to stab you in the aorta with sharp scissors. Now go on, CBC staffer, file your impartial report.

Poilievre's campaign so far has been particularly hostile to media organizations, severely limiting reporters' ability to interact with the leader. The Conservatives have clearly decided that message control is paramount.

So it also falls to hapless CBC reporters to report on how hard it is to report on the Conservatives.

Here’s Evan Dyer, for example, on Power & Politics, mustering measured tones about another pointless day having his questions blocked at a Poilievre presser: “It’s been difficult to get the same level of accountability from the Poilievre campaign as it has been from past conservative campaigns or from the other parties in this election campaign.”

And still the Mother Corp. soldiers on, report after report. There’s something charming about the CBC’s earnest dedication to old-fashioned bullshit debunking, even in this brave new world of deep fakes and battling bots.

Poilievre himself has been the benefactor. “No, Pierre Poilievre's net worth is not $25M, despite what dubious AI-generated articles say,” said a recent news headline on the website of the public broadcaster whose life depends on the outcome of this election.

Meanwhile, CTV dropped a fact-checking segment by reporter Rachel Gilmore after a storm of invective from Conservatives. Fortunately she’s found a home at Canada’s National Observer.

So what might it be like to live in Canada once Poilievre has unplugged the CBC?

The Conservatives surely cast envious eyes on the United States, where Fox News has long served as the Republican Pravda. Canada’s Conservative party already seems to have calculated that this country’s media environment has fragmented enough that they can get their message out while doing an end run around mainstream outlets. Post-CBC, the troll farm’s fences will be officially down.

Conservatives have attempted to prepare the ground for years by questioning the impartiality of the CBC. Money spent on the Mother Corp. is just money wasted, they argue. Why, they might ask, are we pouring more taxpayer dollars into Ian Hanomansing's fleet of private jets, or yet another floor-to-ceiling mosaic of Gloria Macarenko done entirely in precious gems?

Here are some facts, for those who still want facts (and might even be willing to pay a few pennies daily to have them).

A recent study of how Canada’s public broadcasting compares with that of other countries found CBC/Radio-Canada receives much less revenue per capita from government. Your bill? A whopping 10 cents per day. Of 19 countries surveyed, only Portugal, New Zealand and the United States spent less per person. Part of the reason is that the CBC mixes commercial revenue with public in ways that all but three other nations don’t.

The same study looked at whether Canadians trust the CBC. Sorry, Pierre, they do. A lot. In fact, the CBC was the most trusted news source for those polled. More than three out of four francophones and nearly seven in 10 anglophones found the CBC “trustworthy.”

Poilievre’s hate campaign against Canada’s public broadcaster might have played better in another age, such as the long-lost epoch known as 2024. As with much of the Conservative platform, the anti-CBC rhetoric now seems a relic of another time, before the asteroid strike of Donald Trump's threats against Canadian sovereignty.

A national broadcaster is a symbol of national unity, a reminder of our shared identity as Canadians. Poilievre is simultaneously trying to position himself as a Canadian defender while undercutting the institutions that help to link the nation.

Of course, Poilievre might not be telling the truth about defunding the CBC. A poll by Nanos Research found that only 27 per cent of respondents believe the Conservative leader will keep his promises, as opposed to 48 per cent who trust Carney. It's a tricky spot for Poilievre. An election is the time for a leader to put out their vision for the nation, but his best bet might be that people don't believe him.

As is often the case with the Poilievre campaign, it's reminiscent of Trump-style politics. U.S. observers often blithely said that Trump's outrageous rhetoric was not to be taken seriously. We have seen how that worked out.