Harper vs CBC

Of course, Harper's attack on traditional Canada includes the CBC, a force that helps unite the country, inform the citizenry, and hold government to account.

Help us put this ad on the air:

  

In Ottawa, a Senate Committee that has been “studying” the challenges faced by the CBC for the past 20 months has just released its report. The seven Conservative Senators, who are a majority on the Committee were all appointed by Stephen Harper.
As loyal servants, they have done Harper’s bidding, proposing his hostile agenda that would move our CBC towards oblivion.
Harper’s Senators are proposing to rob CBC by handing part of its budget to private TV producers.  They also want to transform CBC into a user-pay ‘PBS North’ – begging viewers for donations.
Eviscerating CBC Television would lead to a two-tier service – where the 80% of Canadians whose first language is English would receive services from CBC inferior to those enjoyed by the 20% of francophone Canadians, although all of us are taxpayers.
The result would be remarkably similar to ideas Harper himself floated back in 2004 when he said:

“I’ve suggested that government subsidies in support of CBC’s services should be to those things that are not... do not have commercial alternatives.”

He then added:

“When you take a look at things like main-English language television and probably to a lesser degree Radio Two, you could look there at putting those on a commercial basis.”

That’s right. Harper wants to privatize CBC Television and these two Senate proposals would lead to that.

With your help, FRIENDS will put a new ad on the air as a forceful response to Harper’s destructive agenda.
Our ad is a powerful statement of what we want from our CBC, what our national public broadcaster means to us as a fundamental part of our democracy, and a force that connects our diverse population coast to coast to coast.