Another Renewal for CBC News. Will this be the One that Works?

July 11, 2022

In the past its flagship nightly news program The National enjoyed good ratings when helmed by national news figures like Knowlton Nash and Peter Mansbridge. No longer, as for years its ratings have paled beside CTV’s nightly National News.

Critics use this fact as a reason to question the very relevance of CBC. The Corporation recently took step to answer this charge by planning to offer more news to more Canadians on more digital platforms and by reverting to a single authoritative journalist anchor for the national, Adrienne Arsenault.


Digital news distribution for CBC news is not new. Over two decades ago CBC news started to go digital and now the results are impressive. CBCNews.ca is used by over 10 million Canadians monthly, and news is now more heavily into digital distribution. It is a little-known fact that over a year The National is seen by 180 million views on channels such as You Tube, Facebook, and CBC Gem. Weekly the program’s You Tube channel is watched by 1.7 million viewers. 


Yet Conservatives hate the CBC and for years have focused on dwindling audience support, even as taxpayer subsidies balloon. An easy target for Pierre Poliviere, the leading Conservative candidate in September’s leadership race. He is calling for “defunding” of the CBC, building on Conservative threats of a similar nature going back years. Unlike in years before when Mulroney was cutting CBC drastically, there is little overt public support for CBC now, especially since it enjoyed a major new infusion of over $600 million from the current Liberal government. In the Liberal platform in the last election even more money was promised to bolster CBC’s national and local news. $400 million over four years is earmarked for this topping the total $1.4 billion budget for the CBC last year. The scale of this generous support from the Liberal government underpins the view in the right wing in Canada that the CBC as an arm of the Liberals. 


Yet there has never been more discussion about the importance of a healthy news industry in guaranteeing a healthy democracy at a time when literally thousands of jobs have been cut from newsrooms across the country. CBC has the largest, most diverse, local and national army of news gatherers in Canada by far. The CBC is working on how its output could be better used. 


It is important that CBC succeed in its latest new strategy for news. Canada so needs a popular national forum for the professional airing and debate of major issues. Can we count on this new strategy providing that and reinstating The National as a true news flagship? 


This latest transformation of The National jettisons the former awkward multi-host format of The National, and the most seasoned journalist among them, Adrienne Arsenault, is being made Chief Correspondent, replacing the long retired Mansbridge in the role as sole anchor. Her authority may translate into greater viewing, and may herald other changes which will save The National. 


The same June 20 announcement from CBC revealed more sweeping plans for news: “CBC News today announced a new strategic approach to better serve audiences across Canada on both television and digital platforms through an enhanced news offering in the year ahead, including the launch of a free streaming channel…Andrew Chang is to play a central role on the new streaming channel, hosting a new daily show that will be the centrepiece of each weekday.” Streaming is a good idea and one that has boosted audiences for three major US networks. Chang seems a natural for this role. 


Much of the new strategy to make CBC news a central source for us all is in development, and there has been a lack of media coverage– with the notable exception of John Doyle of the Globe and Mail who asks “how much CBC news does the world need?” This attests to the fact that further tinkering with CBC’s news operations is not big news. It should be.


The huge nationwide and diverse coverage capabilities of CBC news are needed now more than ever as regional fragmentation becomes more pronounced and national unity seems threatened by Alberta, Saskatchewan and increasing nationalist Quebec. This is what is being worked on. A multi-platform streaming service that would draw down feature video from across the country and promote understanding. 


The critical national issues of racial intolerance, gun control, remaining injustices to indigenous peoples and yes even fear of immigrants need exposing and sound analysis from different points of view regionally on a new national platform. Digital has worked for the CBC for a decade and going deeper into more popular streaming platforms seems a good call. It is being done by the three US national networks with great effect, and 1/3 of their offerings is news or current affair oriented.


The news operation at CBC absorbs most of the money, and for once top management is engaged and supports the new strategy. A new group lead by Brodie Fenlon, Editor In Chief, Executive Director of Programs and Standards is embracing the opportunity offered by streaming and doing a “deeper dive” into current issues which the service will provide. Like a Netflix it will also allow viewers to choose which items they want to see when it is convenient. 


There are fresh new ideas, and they are being worked on. Let’s hope this is not another fruitless attempt at being “relevant”. We can hope these ideas will be well executed and will find bigger audiences and on new digital platforms attract the elusive younger population and face them with the critical public issues which will shape their future. 



Patrick Gossage Insider Political Views

Well-meaning Assault Weapons Ban and Buyback victim of poor timing and major opposition

By Patrick Gossage • April 14, 2026
In contrast to US inaction after almost weekly mass killings, it took one horrible shooting rampage at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, in 1980, to start the drive for public policy changes around gun control. But years delays between the mass shooting outrage and actual policy to rid the country of assault rifles doomed the eventual gun buyback program. The polytechnique horror was huge news in our relatively massacre-free nation. That December day, 25-year-old Marc Lépine stalked the hallways and classrooms of the École Polytechnique de Montréal with a semi-automatic rifle and murdered 14 women and injured another 13 people before killing himself. A year later, the Coalition for Gun Control was formed to push for stricter gun laws, led by survivors of the Montreal massacre. Later that year, the federal government passed Bill C-17, which imposed safety training and a mandatory waiting period to get a firearms licence-- not an effective means of controlling automatic rifles. Much later, in1996, Parliament passed the Firearms Act, Bill C-68, driven in part by a push for stricter gun laws following the Montreal massacre. The act created a national firearms registry and imposed new rules for obtaining a gun licence, including background checks. The former Conservative government, under prime minister Stephen Harper, abolished the long-gun registry, which it said placed an unnecessary burden on law-abiding gun owners. Quebec subsequently created its own provincial registry to replace it. It took another horrific killing nine years later in Nova Scotia to force Ottawa to take real action on miliary-style guns. On April 18 and 19, 2020, 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman committed multiple shootings and set fires at 16 locations, killing 22 people before he was killed by the RCMP. On May 1, 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, following through on a 2019 campaign promise, announced an immediate ban on some 1,500 makes and models of assault weapons.. The Canadian government sought to follow New Zealand's lead when at the same time it announced the ban it promised a plan to force gun owners to surrender military-style firearms. But while New Zealand acted quickly, in 2019, Ottawa only launched a long awaited buyback program in 2026. In contrast, the government of then New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda announced its firearms buyback program shortly after a white supremacist killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch in March, 2019. In order to move quickly, New Zealand set up mobile units where firearm owners could get refunds in exchange for their firearms. They worked hard to get co-operation from gun owners. Meanwhile, here, the firearms industry and individual gun owners vigorously opposed the project, and it was delayed for years. The program was finally initiated this year with little of the sense of urgency it could have had right after the Nova Scotia killings. It has not been going well. In April, the federal public safety minister's office said more than 67,000 assault-style firearms have been declared by 37,869 firearm owners across Canada. That's just under half of the 136,000 firearms the government had budgeted for when it set aside aside $248.6 million for the program. The precise number of banned firearms in Canada is unknown due to the end of the long-gun registry in 2012. There are other deeper problems. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have indicated they will not assist with the program, meaning police are not co-operating as in New Zealand. Conservative MPs and firearm owners say the buyback is a wasteful exercise that targets law-abiding citizens. The original gun-control advocacy group, PolySeSouvient, blames “weak political leadership” for what it calls “poor participation” in the compensation program. It looks like Ottawa - to put it mildly - has blown the opportunity to really reduce the number of people-killing guns in this country.

Two Opposites – Mark Carney and Donald Trump

By Patrick Gossage • March 12, 2026
One of the major differences between these two men is that Carney understands the value of well-thought-out strategy, abundantly clear in his Davos speech, which laid out one for middle powers to deal with the end of a rules-based international order and the rise of hegemony. Trump's lack of strategic understanding is clear in his bumbling attempts to justify the billion-dollar-a-day Iran war. His overall tactic of “flooding the zone” – mounting a new initiative or major announcement every day, or even several times a day to ensure press and opposition can never catch up. This tactic has served him well – confusing the world and his would-be opponents into submission under a valley of activity and harsh opinions from the leader of the world. Contrast this approach to leadership from Carney. He is systematically building a nation less dependent on US trade by travelling the world building new alliances and trading partners. And in the scare of Australia giving substance to his idea of alliances with middle powers. All laid out in the Davos speech. It is instructive to appreciate how much Trump was irritated by the Davos speech. Carney got a standing ovation; Trump’s rambling lengthy diatribe did not. He won’t soon forget being so upstaged. He surely recognized an intellectual power he could never match. Carney is a realist and pragmatic when he stated recently “We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.” He is dealing with the world that is being reshaped by an irrational power-mad president, a world the powerful Stephen Miller said “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.” Does Carney sometimes err on the side of supporting Trump likely to ensure that critical talks on free trade and tariffs have some chance of finding a sympathetic ear? Yes; first he seemed to fully support Trump’s war with Iran. He later made his support more nuanced, saying Trump’s actions were against the rules-based international order. He now says we will not get involved unless a NATO ally is threatened. But generally, Carney is highly rational in contrast to Trump’s self-centered irrationality. Take Trump’s bizarre ill-informed letter to the Prime Minister of Norway, who had no role in deciding if he got the Nobel Peace Prize: “I no longer feel obligated to think purely of Peace (he subsequently engaged in an ever expanding war against Iran). He then reiterated his demand for “complete and Total Control, of Greenland. Thank you!”. His late-night rants, complete with caps, on social media show a mind out of control. Thay are dutifully reported on US news media and often astonish with their non sequiturs and nastiness. One of his more unpresidential quotes came as he fingered White House drapes: “I chose these myself. I always liked gold." The big question for Canadians who are more and more disillusioned with the antics of the President: could these two opposite ever sit down and do a deal that works for Canada. The two do text, and Carney has admitted that in private Trump does listen. But there is also evidence that the trade people in the White House do not like Canada, and as Trump has said, we owe our very existence to the US. And we are “difficult”. They have said that the current trade deal is not good for the US and could be trashed entirely and -deals with Mexico and Canada could be separate and the current trilateral deal may be dead.  Canada was at the brink of reducing the heavy sectoral tariffs on steel, aluminum, and lumber when Premier Ford’s unfortunate ads during the Rose Bowl that featured President Reagan speaking against the usefulness of Tariffs led To Trump suspending talks. They only recently resumed. So can our world-renowned businessman and banker hope to sit down with the unpredictable and unstable President and cut a deal? Some hope that if we extend talks, the President, weakened by the midterms, the bad economic fallout from an unpopular war, and the fragmentation of the MAGA movement may be easier to deal with. On the other hand he may badly need a “win,” bullying big concessions out of Canada and reaping so-cabled benefits from a weaker free trade deal. There is a scenario where Trump gets a black eye if Carney simply walks away with the conviction, perhaps easily shared with an increasingly nationalistic and confident Canada that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” In any case, what a decisive and challenging future we face with Canada at play. Can Carney win for Canada against his opposite by losing a deal?"
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