After a months-long review of CBC/Radio-Canada’s mandate, Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge is expected to announce changes meant to modernize the public broadcaster sometime over the next four weeks.
A senior government official told CBC News the government is in the final stages of drafting what could be major legislative and regulatory changes to better position the company for the future as it grapples with seismic developments in the news and broadcasting space.
The government official — who spoke on the condition they not be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly — said a new CEO is also expected to be named as the package of CBC reforms is announced. The term for the current CEO, Catherine Tait, is set to end in January.
The mandate changes are also expected to address long-term funding, but that component hasn’t yet been finalized, the official said.
The government is weighing how best to fund the CBC while also giving it a new mandate that may demand more resources, the official said.
All of these changes are expected to be announced in October or in the first few days of November because St-Onge will be stepping back to take some parental leave, the official said.
The CBC’s current mandate, crafted in 1991, is set out in law in the Broadcasting Act. It hasn’t been updated since the advent of the internet.
In a statement, St-Onge said Canada needs “a strong public broadcaster that connects and informs us coast-to-coast-to-coast.”
“I am looking forward to soon announcing important steps that will help modernize CBC/Radio-Canada. This is what we committed to Canadians and what Canadians expect,” St-Onge said.
“Like the rest of the news and information sector, the public broadcaster is facing a significant drop in commercial revenue due to the dominant role of foreign tech giants in the ad market. As a government, we are working toward strengthening our independent public broadcaster.”
When asked what the company wants out of the mandate review and if it asked for more money, a spokesperson for CBC/Radio-Canada said, “We look forward to hearing the results of the minister’s work.”
Next CEO will be a ‘change maker’: official
The next CEO will be a “change maker” who is willing to shake up the public broadcaster so that it is not business as usual, the government official said.
“This person could feasibly be a key player in whether CBC lives or dies at some point,” the official said.
That’s a reference to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s repeated pledge to defund CBC’s English-language operations while preserving at least some parts of Radio-Canada, the company’s French service, if he’s elected.
Poilievre has said that people can get news, sports and entertainment content from private outlets and there isn’t a need for a public broadcaster in English Canada any longer.
Poilievre also has said the CBC’s parliamentary allocation would be better spent elsewhere and he wants to turn the company’s broadcast centres in Toronto and Ottawa into housing.
“I can’t wait to defund the CBC and sell off the headquarters for housing,” Poilievre said on social media earlier this year after the company’s board of directors authorized “bonuses” or performance pay for managers and other eligible employees.
CBC/Radio-Canada received about $1.3 billion from the federal government last year, according to the company’s annual report, and generated about $515 million of its own revenue from advertising, subscriber fees and investments.
The company’s defenders say CBC should be preserved to ensure Canadian stories are still told at a time when foreign players like Netflix and Disney are increasingly dominant and other domestic outlets are going bust.
About 450 newspapers have gone out of business since 2009, according to government data, and broadcasters like CTV and Global have been making cuts to staff and programming.
Global’s parent company, Corus, is facing particularly acute financial challenges. CTV’s parent company, BCE Inc., is selling off assets.
Greater focus on local news
The mandate changes are expected to reinforce CBC’s commitment to local news at a time when “news deserts” have emerged in some parts of the country because so many outlets have gone out of business.
The government wants CBC to eventually have a more collaborative relationship with other local news outlets, the official said, to “help lift everybody up.” What form that collaboration takes will ultimately depend on how the CBC implements the forthcoming mandate changes, the official said.
The changes will also be designed to make the public broadcaster more trusted by all Canadians, with an eye to bolstering the company’s support among people who want to do away with the broadcaster altogether, the government official said.
The government has seen polling that shows a majority of Canadians support CBC/Radio-Canada and want to keep it, while there’s a vocal minority that strongly support Poilievre’s calls to shut it down, the official said.
Rebuilding trust
“The CBC belongs to everybody and that includes people who don’t use it every day or who don’t say they need it,” the official said.
“Those people need to see this place is going to be trustworthy and the changes are designed to reinforce the trust level.”
The mandate change also comes after CBC announced a series of layoffs last year to help address a revenue shortfall.
After some employees were let go, the layoffs were halted when the government stepped in with more money in its April federal budget to shore up CBC’s finances.
The federal Liberal government has also passed legislation, the Online News Act and the Online Streaming Act, to force major streaming and social media players to pay more to support the Canadian news and entertainment ecosystem.
The government has justified the legislation as necessary at a time when advertising dollars have moved from traditional platforms like broadcast TV and cable to social media sites like Facebook and Google.
Minister of Canadian Heritage Pascale St-Onge told reporters on Tuesday that a decision by the CRTC, which calls for online streaming services to hand over five per cent of domestic revenues, will help stimulate investment in Canadian content.
Those changes have been fiercely opposed by the firms — most of them American — that have to pay to support Canadian news and entertainment. To avoid paying media companies to link to their content, Meta has pulled Canadian news off Facebook and Instagram.
The legislation has also been criticized by some observers who say it makes media outlets and journalists beholden to the federal government, a charge the companies, the workers and the unions that represent them have strenuously denied.
