The federal Liberal government wants to give MORE money to CBC! Feds are pushing to give about $2.5 billion per year to the state broadcaster. That’s more than a billion MORE than taxpayers pay now!
Will CBC decide what’s true for Canadians if the government makes it the “fact checker” for information?
The feds are also planning to weaken accountability by hiding funds for the CBC outside of budget documents MORE: Heritage Minister Pascal St-Onge says if YOU want to defund the CBC: you “cannot say that you love Canada”.
Video Transcript:
(00:00) hey taxpayers remember how thousands and thousands of Canadians want the CBC to be defunded yeah so taxpayers Federation and our supporters we think that the CBC is a huge waste of money we’re pointing out the fact that next to nobody is watching this thing in Canada anymore and the ethical conflict that journalists should not be paid by the government those are three huge issues okay and very good reasons why the state Broad Caster why government funded media CBC needs to be defunded if folks love the programming on CBC that’s awesome
(00:39) they should choose to pay for it themselves we said all of this at the Heritage committee when we testified about defunding the CBC here’s a clip we are here to speak for thousands of hardworking taxpayers who want to defund the CBC this needs to happen for three important reason reasons the cost of the CBC nearly nobody is watching the CBC and journalists should not be paid by the government okay so that was back a couple of months ago and apparently the Heritage Minister has been listening to Canadians and now she’s come forward
(01:17) with her recommendations and uh doesn’t sound like she was listening that hard because she’s recommending that the government increased the funding to the CBC in fact it sounds like she wants to increase the funding of the CBC up to about $2.5 billion per year yeah to increase the funding the CBC already gets by more than a billion dollar a year to put this kind of money into perspective about $2.
(01:48) 5 billion that kind of money could cover the grocery bills of more than 150,000 Canadian families for a year so the CBC is a huge waste of money next to nobody’s watching the CBC if you check out to their own latest quarterly report their Prime Time audience share for CBC News network is a 1.
(02:22) 7 put another way that means about 98% of Canadians are choosing to not watch the CBC at that time frame in Prime time their ratings for their supper hour newscasts like the 6:00 local news are so small City by city that they’re almost impossible to measure now they’re gone they have fallen off a cliff so it’s a huge waste of money next to nobody is watching it and yes it’s obviously a conflict of interest for journalists to be paid by the government journalists are supposed to hold the powerful to account pretty hard to do that that when you’re counting on the
(03:01) powerful government for your paycheck there’s another element here that the minister is recommending she’s saying that we should remove the cbc’s funding from the budget system meaning the 1.4 billion that they get right now per year that should all be scrubbed from the budget that shouldn’t show up in any way in budget documents no she’s saying it should be baked into legislation and into statutes so that it automatically is there and members of parliament don’t get to Parlay about it they don’t get to debate it and they
(03:36) don’t get to vote on the thing what are we paying them to do there if we’re just going to automatically give money to the CBC automatically improve its pay hikes to the CBC like this is pretty out there another element that the minister brought up at this press conference and I want you to listen to this this is a clip she’s basically saying that the CBC or an entity like the CBC should be deciding what is true and not that it should be in charge of fact cheing what we can see here and share to decide whether or not it is
(04:17) disinformation or propaganda listen to this in Shrine in law the role that Canada plays in the fight in the fight against this information to support the public especially in the current context and this ref refers directly to some of the recommendations that were made um by the foreign interference commission uh which repeated how important it is that Canadians can rely on Canadian sources of information to be more resilient and to understand the patterns that the other countries use to uh disseminate uh propaganda or disinformation to
(04:52) influence how we live together and our political uh context and this is why I propose to Anchor in Canada’s mandate its role um in helping Canadian the Canadian population uh fight against this information and understand uh fact-based information so again that was the Heritage Minister saying she wants to open and alter the Mandate of the CBC away from news to truth testing that was a weird one I’m going to leave you with this because it got my dander up pretty good so you know how we were saying that lots and
(05:36) lots and lots of Canadians want to defund the CBC okay they think it’s a huge waste of money very few people are watching it anymore and it’s a conflict of interest for journalists to be on government payroll this Minister said that if you want to defund the CBC you can’t say that you love Canada listen to this supporting our public broadcast p is not a question of the political left or right it’s not a liberal or a conservative issue it is above all a commitment to ourselves our culture and our independence you cannot say you love
(06:13) Canada and yet pledge to destroy our public broadcaster that is Central in telling the stories of our country I know lots of people in my immediate friend Circle and Family Circle who love this country today and want to defund this CBC it is not up to the Heritage minister to decide who does and does not love this country based on whether or not we want to keep paying for the CBC I will point out that Heritage Minister’s salary is fully funded by you the taxpayer she is paid about $300,000 per year with a huge expense
(06:52) account so just saying culture does not come from government and the government does not get to tell you what to think about whether or not you should defund the state broadcaster folks share this video and if you want to defund the CBC join the taxpayer Army head on over to our website taxpayer.
(07:16) com sign the petition to defund the CBC and defund the media that’s how we can help you stand up and be heard
