How the Conservatives are destroying the CBC Tories and their corporate lackeys the biggest threat to free speech in Canada By Liam Britten he state of Canadian media reminds me of an old riddle from elementary school that I’m sure everyone’s heard. The riddle goes that there’s a farmer with a fox, a duck and some grain who needs to cross a river but can only take one of his three things in the boat with him at one time. The most important thing for the farmer to do is not leave the fox alone with the duck, or the fox will have an easy meal. Canadians, sadly, have left a fox watching over our duck. The fox is the cunning, greedy Conservative government and the duck is our public broadcaster, the CBC. And what a sitting duck it is. The Harper Conservatives have always been contemptuous of the media, but their relationship with the CBC is one of ideological animosity. The Conservatives make no secret of their free market, pro-big business tendencies and the CBC stands in the way of big business maximizing their earnings. This is because the CBC represents standards. The CBC sets a standard because they provide programming at a certain level of quality that private media conglomerates must either match or exceed or they will lose viewers. CBC is able to provide this standard because they are a publicly owned corporation not interested in a “race to the bottom” to maximize profits. The two private conglomerates, Canwest Global and CTVglobemedia (that’s right, there are only two companies that control virtually all of Canada’s media), don’t need to provide a high-quality challenging our established notions. Moore has refused to do the simplest things to help the CBC. The CBC, on the week of March 20", asked for an advance on federal funding that they were allotted to receive —not more money, just money sooner. Moore | has said that he was unaware of such a request despite the fact that CBC President Hubert Lacroix has told the press that he wants the advance and also told a several hundred-strong luncheon _| at the Empire Club about his request. || Minister Moore must not be very observant if he’s unaware of the request. Perhaps the greatest insult took place at last week’s Juno Awards. After refusing an advance on funding and overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars of cutbacks to an institution of Canada’s culture and heritage, James Moore shows up at the awards show to help present the New Artist of the product; they only need to provide Year Award. What gall. Apparently the something better than what the other is always-unaware Moore is also unaware broadcasting. So, if one competitor cuts of what his boss Stephen Harper had to back on spending and lowers quality, —_ say during the election last year. Harper the other one can do so as well. It’s said, “I think when ordinary working a very fine way of doing business if people come home, turn on the TV profit is your primary objective. and see a gala of a bunch of people at, For the CBC, profit is not the you know, a rich gala all subsidized objective. The CBC has always been _y taxpayers... I’m not sure that’s committed to quality, and letting that —_ something that resonates with ordinary quality regulate broadcast television but since taking power a few years ago, the Conservatives have done everything short of dismantle the CBC. Since 2006, when the Conservatives took the reins of our public broadcaster, the CBC’s bread and butter, sports programming, has gone to hell. They’ ve lost the rights to all CFL games, Toronto Blue Jays games, the Vancouver Olympics and their French affiliate Radio-Canada has lost the rights to Montreal Canadiens games. Losing the Hockey Night in Canada theme song seems trivial by comparison. Perhaps the greatest irony of all is the man currently running the CBC, James Moore. Moore is the Member of Parliament for Port Moody-Westwood- Port Coquitlam and was made Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages after the 2008 Federal Election. I’ve met Mr. Moore before; he came to talk to my high school class in 2002 and told us that Canadians don’t want their tax dollars being spent on values they disagree with. How strange then that a man who opposes spending money on new ideas and challenging our established notions is in charge of a network that should by its very nature should be bringing us new ideas and people.” So apparently the Conservatives don’t mind funding a “rich gala” as long as one of their boys gets to have a nice photo op when it goes down. This must be what Harper means when he says that his government supports the arts. The mismanagement of the CBC since the Conservatives took power is appalling, but not so much appalling as it is baffling. Why would the Conservative Party, who advertised themselves as the party of “Strong Leadership,” stand by and watch as such incompetence takes place under their leadership? If I may go out on a limb here, I smell a “vast, right-wing conspiracy,” as Hillary would say. The demise of the CBC is great for the Conservatives and private media conglomerates that share their free market ideals. If the CBC becomes a useless shell of what it once was, then either they will be forced to produce such low-quality programming that they won’t even be on the media radar, or more likely, Canada’s public broadcaster will be broken up, sold off and privatized. Either way, Canwest Global and CTVglobemedia win; the standards are gone and now the race to the bottom only has two runners. And the quality of Canada’s media will become a sitting duck for the foxes of corporate greed. eae | Te oo yaa COUNTRY CABARET