Apparently I should move to the United States. That’s what one reader has told me for daring to write something that questions the CBC and their $1.1 billion subsidy plus their access to hundreds of millions of dollars more from other sources of government mandated money for broadcasters.
Mike from Nova Scotia sent me the following in response to my weekend stories on the state broadcaster.
It is Canadian,(the CBC) if you have issue move to the states, take up one of their sports, listen to their version of CBC and make real sure your private health insurance is up to date and you have your lawyer(s) read everything twice, IT IS NOT ALWAYS ABOUT MONEY.
I didn’t actually write anything that complains about CBC programming, I’ll leave that to others, what I am writing about is accountability. I can tell you from experience that the waste of money at CBC is a pet peeve of many CBC employees including reporters who can be nickled and dimed while the executives spend in ways that no other executive suite in the country would dare. Many of the stories we hear about CBC come from CBCers themselves.
It is true that the company I am employed by is owned by Quebecor, a competitor of CBC. Some wrote to say why should CBC have to open up how they spend their money of Quebecor does not. That’s simple – the $1.1 billion subsidy each year.
That subsidy costs more per year than the F-35 fighter jet purchase ever will. The CBC subsidy is worth 4 times the cost of the sponsorship scandal that saw millions flow to Liberal friendly people and firms in Quebec. One year of the CBC subsidy could fund three years of Canada’s Affordable Housing Initiative.
And of course there is the environment. One year of CBC funding could fund the Green Energy infrastructure fund for another five years. It was former Liberal environment minister David Anderson who said, “I don’t have the resources of the CBC. It’s a good policy question as to whether or not we should be reversing that.”
I’m not calling on the CBC funding to be cut, just that they are open about how that $1.1 billion is spent. They have safeguards in place to protect journalistic sources and information that competitors could use to attack it, say like Quebecor. But it is our view that they are applying these exemptions far too widely.
If you have a story about the CBC wasting taxpayers money, we’d love to hear it. Email us @ cbctips@sunmedia.ca
If you missed the original stories you can read them at the links below.
Secretive CBC lacks accountability
CBC worst offender for ignoring info requests says expert
Government to CBC: be open, comply with law
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