Can a Government review of CBC mandate save English TV so it matters to us again?

Patrick Gossage • January 16, 2024

CBC English TV mattered a lot to anyone alive in the sixties and seventies when comedy programs like Wayne and Shuster were must watches in households in Canada and on the Ed Sullivan program in the US. The 11:00 pm news anchored by hosts like Eral Cameron and Stanley Burke dominated the airwaves. The seventies brought the popular The Beachcombers which enjoyed a lifetime of heavily watched 350 episodes. No longer.

CBC TV seems to enjoy the same much diminished popularity as its chief benefactor, the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who drastically increased CBC’s government funding now at $1.3 billion a year. Viewing numbers for English TV are grim. In the last five years, its prime time viewing audience dropped to only 4.4% meaning most Canadians don’t tune in at all. Pierre Poilievre hits a nerve when he promises to defund CBC English. Some ask if it is beyond saving.


CBC does have strengths. It knows how to do popular and high-quality radio and the results speak for themselves - English radio has 14.1 per

cent of Canadians listening with CBC morning radio is regularly at or near the top of their markets: CBC Toronto enjoys a 12.3 per cent; Montreal, 14.9 per cent; and Vancouver, 10.9 per cent. How can TV too find a way to produce quality programming that people want to watch?


Political Will


With Olivier threatening its very existence, it has now dawned on the government in the form of its Heritage Minister Pascale St. Onge who in a New Year’s interview said now’s the time for the Liberal government to begin working with Canadians and experts to define what the CBC should like over the next year and decade. “Canada’s news and cultural sectors would be at serious risk should the Conservatives form government under leader Pierre Poilievre,” she said. “(Conservatives) have shown they think that the arts and cultural sector should be left to the free market… “ And we know that with foreign companies and foreign entities that take so much space online, it means that we would basically abandon our cultural sector in Canada.” Now a relevant CBC English is a political issue.


It is interesting that St. Onge’s preoccupation with preserving a strong Canadian presence amidst the deluge of high quality largely US movies and programs on streaming services echoes the 1928 Air Commission’s findings that led to the CBC’s creation. Then private Canadian radio stations were not only beginning to fall into American hands but were unable to offer a popular Canadian alternative to programming that was flooding across the border from the US. We face a similar situation today. With the added challenge that a well-funded CBC English service with the exception of radio seems challenged to make high quality programs that appeal to Canadians.


It’s not that in the not-too-distant past CBC has proven it could to just that. Programs like Little Mosque on the Prairie, Kim’s Convenience and

especially Schitt’s Creek have been huge successes with audiences here and in the US as well as breaking new ground in the way only the CBC

can.


More funding not less?


However, if CBC is to retain its very broad mandate of virtually being everything to everyone - i.e. its age-old mission to “inform, enlighten and entertain” as well as maintaining French services across Canada, a northern service with indigenous languages, five discretionary television channels and four Canada-wide radio networks, it is going to require more public funding not less. This need falls precisely at the time CBC is in dire financial troubles with a $125 million budget shortfall. This forced a recent announcement of a 10 per cent cut in its workforce and a reduction of its English and French programming budgets for the next fiscal year. About $40 million was cut from independent production commissions and program acquisitions. CBC programming will take a $25 million hit and Radio-Canada will see a $15 million reduction.


It’s well known that CBC Radio Canada’s programming is hugely well received in Quebec – it does not have a popularity problem. Perhaps

this is due to a little-known imbalance in funding between the two networks, English and French. Richard Stursberg, who was the executive vice president of English Services from 2004 to 2010, wrote revealingly last March in the HUB: “Given that Canada’s population is roughly 38 million people, {this means that the} 8 million French- speaking Canadians receive a per capita public broadcasting subsidy of almost 70 dollars, while the rest of the country receives 23 dollars. In effect, this makes Radio-Canada one of the better-financed public broadcasters in the world and CBC one of the worst”. Follow the money but given Quebec’s cultural sensitivities, no federal government would dare change this unfair formula.


Digital CBC


Canadians are increasingly choosing digital platforms for their viewing and listening needs, and CBC English cannot be faulted for not keeping

up with the digital and streaming revolution. Its long-established digital news service performs amazingly at times of enhanced national news

interest such as elections. At the last CRTC CBC hearing the Commission recognized, for the first time ever, the significant contribution of our

digital streaming services – CBC Gem, ICI TOU.TV, CBC Listen and Radio- Canada OHdio – to the Canadian regulated system. More streaming

services are coming: the 24/7 streaming channels CBC Comedy and CBC News BC will land this fall, following last November’s launch of CBC News Explore, and will be followed by more local news channels. Indeed, CBC in this department seems prepared for the future.


The CBC has proven that it can do what no commercial network could and attract huge audiences when it behaves as a true Canadian public

broadcaster. The huge production with both English and French networks Canada: A People's History with 17- fully produced episode, on the history of Canada attracted an audience in its first seasons of over two million per episode and still enjoys an impressive afterlife in school use. This is the kind of ambitious Canadian project could win the hearts and minds of Canadians again.


There is general agreement that CBC TV English News - its unrivalled reach and staff including the almost the only Canadian international correspondents - should be the go-to news service for Canadians. It is not, and if it was there would be less talk of defunding CBC English. The CBC ombudsman in the most recent CBC Annual Report shone a revealing light on a tone in CBC news that turns off many Canadians. Here is his finding: “The prevailing theme of complaints is that reporters and editors are not making editorial decisions based on public interest, but rather to serve a social or political agenda. This comes up frequently in stories relating to the pandemic. But it comes up as well for stories that relate to partisan politics, race, gender, and other subjects related to equity and justice.” Clearly there are major changes needed to bring audiences back to CBC TV news.


What kind of review will fix it?


The question remains – can some sort of yet to be defined CBC “review” as foreseen by the Heritage Minister save CBC English. Bringing back lost audiences to CBC English productions and CBC news is a huge challenge given budget cuts and strong ongoing US streaming competition. But It’s not impossible. We also need public pressure to lobby for the importance of the CBC as a national cultural and information institution. This is a challenge. Unfortunately, there is no longer a robust Friends of Canadian Broadcasting which in the past when CBC faced drastic budget cuts mounted national campaigns supported by labour unions. The historic arguments for public broadcasting are very relevant today. Graham Spry of the Canadian Radio League which was responsible for the launch public of broadcasting under PM R.B. Bennet’s Conservative government are still pertinent: "It is a choice between commercial interests and the people's interest. It is a choice between the state and the United States," Spry said. The same argument works today. The Canadian public interest, particularly the interest of millions of new Canadians welcomed in the last decades is the same: who will tell our stories and explain what is happening in our country? Will US streaming services or mega US social networks increase our knowledge of ourselves and tell our stories.. Unlikely. That is why we will always need the CBC – it’s that simple. At least the federal government understands this. Hopefully a review, faced with the Conservative threat to the CBC, will continue to lead it to strategies that will make it more indispensable to Canadian audiences.

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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