TORONTO – The law of unintended consequences raised its “ugly head” yet again. The political tactic of slinging mud just to see if some of it sticks has invariably produced smudges on those who sling it in the first place. But many find the CBC to be too convenient a target to ignore. According to its Annual Report, last year, CBC/Radio Canada declared Revenues of $1.9 Billion. 

Of that total, $ 1.574 Billion comes from Government funding. Lucky them. From our perspective, the mandate of the CBC as it pertains to “nation-building” is valuable exercise that justifies the narrative describing the nation and the government’s programs and policies on Canadians. We think the people of Canada pay handsomely for that service… and have a right to critique what they get in return.

That’s for on-going discussion, which now includes a notable Canadian, a certain Elon Musk. Yes, the one and same multi-gazillionaire with controlling interest in Tesla and Twitter. His mother is Canadian. He moved to Canada at age 17, formalized his Canadian citizenship, and attended Queen’s University for two years before applying for residency in the USA.

Someone took exception to his medium’s observations on the CBC’s coverage of Government Bills, defining them as some sort of propaganda/censorship, to which he responded, in effect, that the CBC is government-run and citing figures for sources of funding to underline his point.

The [partisan] outrage that a “right wing” foreigner would dare criticize those of us whose virtue is not sullied by either money or politics was too much to swallow for Canadians who are “poorer” and hence more “virtuous” than he. Elon Musk can defend himself.

The Annual Report above reveals that the CBC/Radio Canada also earned $333,856,000 in advertising. Some of it from Governments obliged to “inform their citizenry” about how their money services society. (Ed, note: the Corriere Canadese does not receive any from the government of Canada. A preliminary survey of other ethnic language publications suggests that we are not alone).

Interestingly, the CBC/Radio Canada also garnered some $85,694,000 from online advertising, thanks to platforms like Twitter. The CBC (like those of us in the Press) supports Government Bills to “compel” online platforms to share the cost of editorial content which those platforms carry to earn advertising dollars.

Multilingual publications serve close to 25% of Canada’s citizenry… roughly ten million Canadians who function in a language other than [an] Aboriginal [one], English or French. CBC/Radio Canada spends 57.7% of its operating budget for services in English, 42.3% for services in French. There is no indication it spends anything for services to other language groups.

Is CBC/Radio Canada a successful nation builder? It claims to have 203,333 unique visitors per day on its online platform (that’s ½ of one%) of the population, for an average of 55 minutes pe day – there are 1,440 minutes in each day. Who is watching or reading their programs?

One suspects none of them are from multilingual communities.