The Conservative Party of Canada’s stance on defunding the CBC is that the public broadcaster’s French-language services in Quebec are protected. While party leader Pierre Poilievre hasn’t explicitly stated this himself, his Quebec lieutenant, Pierre Paul-Hus, has been unequivocal: Defunding CBC does not mean defunding Société Radio-Canada (SRC).
In the Rest of Canada, the reasons for this distinction have become abundantly clear, as SRC’s New Year’s Eve ratings, released recently, vividly illustrate. Several of SRC’s year-end variety, musical, and comedy shows attracted over a million viewers each. For instance, Infoman averaged 3.5 million viewers, while Bye Bye averaged a staggering 4.6 million viewers on average, encompassing 54% of Quebec’s population. To put this in perspective, the 2023 Super Bowl captured roughly a third of Americans, and England’s quarterfinal World Cup match against France garnered a similar percentage of British viewers. These numbers reflect a public broadcaster that resonates with its audience and aligns with the current cultural climate—a broadcaster that would be sorely missed if it were to disappear.
However, the beginning of the new year did not bring cheer to CBC’s downtown Toronto offices. On December 29, the network announced, somewhat oddly timed, that it could not produce a live New Year’s Eve special due to financial pressures. It was evident that the cancellation had been decided long before the announcement. Were they hoping someone would notice its absence from the schedule, and when no one did, they had to make it official themselves?
Despite my jesting, this New Year’s Eve special used to achieve decent ratings by CBC standards. For instance, in 2022, it attracted 1.2 million viewers, which, although fewer than Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest on CityTV, was still respectable. When the ratings agency Numeris last released Canadian ratings data in August 2022, CTV’s Evening News averaged 1.24 million viewers, making it the highest-rated program in the country. In contrast, CBC’s highest-rated program, The Great British Baking Show, only ranked 16th, and CBC’s The National didn’t even make the top 30.
If CBC cannot afford to produce one of its most-watched programs of the year, then what is its purpose? The corporation insists on its indispensability, but its actions suggest the opposite. This is the same network that responded to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, arguably the most significant global news event of the century, by canceling all its local newscasts because it couldn’t find staff willing to come to work (although it later reversed this decision).
Finally, after years of inexplicable inaction, the Liberal government appears to be acknowledging the dire state of CBC (as opposed to SRC). Over the holiday period, Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge announced her intention to initiate some form of mandate review “before the next election.” However, this notion seems absurd, given that the next election is at most 22 months away—a woefully inadequate timeframe for this government to conduct a comprehensive top-down review of such a lumbering and bureaucratic institution as CBC. This review should have happened years ago, well before the broadcaster faced a severe threat.
Furthermore, St-Onge framed this idea as a means of safeguarding CBC from potential Conservative defunding efforts. She insinuated that the Conservatives favor leaving the arts and cultural sector to the free market—a viewpoint she deemed outdated. However, this approach only reinforces the Conservatives’ central argument: that CBC is a network aligned with Liberal interests, in contrast to SRC, which they see as a network for all Canadians.
In reality, there’s no mandate that St-Onge could devise for CBC that would change Poilievre’s perspective or shield it from future defunding. The only effective course of action is for CBC to improve its production of content that resonates with English Canada—content that Canadians would genuinely lament losing. This transformation would necessitate substantial changes and several years to implement, time that neither CBC nor the Liberals seem to have at their disposal.