Friends launch ‘preventative’ campaign to protect CBC funding

The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting launched a new campaign Tuesday that it says is a “preventative” measure to remind the Conservative government of its promise to maintain or increase funding to CBC/Radio-Canada. At a news conference Monday, Ian Morrison, a spokesman for watchdog group the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, told reporters that the campaign's satirical videos call on the government to keep its election promise. “We want to draw to their attention that public broadcasting is very popular with Canadians, including a number of people who support the Conservative party and it is still very popular with people whose second choice is the Conservative party,” Morrison said. “I suspect that they already know that, but we’re just underlying it.” A survey carried out by the Friends found that seven out of 10 Canadians want the government to maintain funding to the CBC. Two videos released Tuesday on YouTube, which Morrison said were funded by 150,000 Friends supporters and charitable contributions from production entities, address a “worst-case scenario”: The privatization of Canada’s public broadcaster. The videos feature messages from the CBC’s fictional new owner, Lance Fury, a personal friend of the prime minister and a former professional wrestling promoter in the U.S. “Canadians are gonna love this,” Fury says in the video. “I mean, let’s be honest. They’re very unique in that they’re just like Americans, except for Quebeckians, who are more like Puerto Ricans.” The videos seek to illustrate what could happen to Canadian broadcasting if the CBC fell into the wrong hands. “This effort dramatizes what is perhaps our greatest fear—one that grows with each passing day’s events on Parliament Hill—that the Conservative government secretly intends to privatize some or all of our national public broadcaster, selling it to the highest bidder,” Morrison said in a release. “Two Smackdown videos portray this worst-case scenario arising from the government’s hostile attitude towards the CBC.” Morrison said that, prior to the general election, Heritage Minister James Moore and other Conservative candidates said funding to the CBC would be maintained or increased. The public broadcaster is now part of the Conservative government's strategic review to balance the budget, which requires each department and agency to propose spending cuts of five or 10 per cent. But the broadcaster has recently come under scrutiny from Tory MPs who are expressing skepticism about how CBC spends its annual $1.1 billion in parliamentary appropriations. The Conservative government argues the public broadcaster must be more transparent under the Access to Information Act. Following a speech at the International Institute of Communications conference in Ottawa Tuesday, Moore told reporters that the CBC will always be a source of public discussion. “They receive over a billion dollars from Canadian taxpayers and it’s obviously the most public of all Canada’s Crown corporations,” he said. “Everyone has something to say about certain shows, decisions and directions. It always has been and always will be a source of pretty heated and intense debate.” Moore said there is a role for the public broadcaster to reach Canadians in both official languages. “That’s an essential role for the public broadcaster,” he said. Moore added that the CBC does more than the private sector in terms of serving Canada’s northern and aboriginal communities. “There is market failure, particularly in television broadcasting, in both of Canada’s official languages and in the eight aboriginal languages that the CBC broadcasts in,” he said. “The CBC has a role because there is indeed market failure in that regard.” The Friends' survey, conducted from a sample of 2,022 adults between Nov. 4 to Nov. 11, 2011, said 46 per cent of Canadians trust the NDP to protect the CBC and that 29 per cent trust the Conservative party to do so. Angus Reid conducted the online poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.18 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Last week, Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber attempted to bypass the Access to Information Act’s section 68.1 exemption for CBC by using the House of Commons order paper to obtain programming information about the broadcaster. Four questions submitted by the MP on the Nov. 25 order paper inquire about the salaries and expenses of CBC broadcasters Peter Mansbridge and George Stroumboulopoulos as well as CBC president and CEO Hubert T. Lacroix. Other order paper questions relate to how much each CBC employee spent on expenses from 2000 to 2011. Rathgeber has also asked for the salaries and names of each CBC employee earning more than $100,000 a year. Maryse Bertrand, vice-president of real estate, legal services and general counsel at CBC, also told the House of Commons ethics committee last week that releasing information about the salaries of CBC personalities could put the broadcaster in a vulnerable position by beginning a “war for talent.” At the press conference Tuesday, Morrison said he believes that the salaries of CBC’s president and senior executives should be available to the public but not necessarily the salaries of its broadcasters or journalists. In an apparent response to Rathgeber, NDP MP Tyrone Benskin submitted his own line of questions on Monday’s order paper, inquiring about the salaries and expenses of officials in the Prime Minister’s Office, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff, Nigel Wright. According to the rules of the House of Commons, a government response to the questions is required within a period of 45 days, but the government is not required to provide answers. Among other questions, Benskin has asked how much Harper spent on the G8 and G20 summits and on Canadian television productions. The list of information he's seeking includes the Prime Minister’s itemized list of expenses for hospitality, food, drink, hotels and transportation in trips to Paris, London, Washington and Boston. “With respect to salaries at the Prime Minister’s office and minister’s offices, how many employees earn more than $100,000 and what are their names and salaries?” Benskin asks. dgrenier@thewirereport.ca

Friends launch ‘preventative’ campaign to protect CBC funding

Broadcast | November 29, 2011

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