This is a first. I have cut and pasted a CBC article on The Sour Grapevine in order to share it with my readers and so I can now post it on Facebook.
Heritage minister pitches CBC/Radio-Canada overhaul and a major funding hike
Pascale St-Onge says a CBC funding boost will protect Canada's cultural 'sovereignty'
Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge announced Thursday a plan to overhaul CBC/Radio-Canada to shore up an institution she said is "at a critical crossroads" but one that is necessary as the country faces American threats to its sovereignty.
While pitching a program that is unlikely to be enacted by the current government given the likelihood of a federal election sometime soon, St-Onge said American "billionaire tech oligarchs" are tightening their grip on the flow of information and Canada needs to revive its nearly century-old public broadcaster to "tell our own stories," saying it's a "national security issue" that so much of what Canadians consume is generated elsewhere.
"More than ever it's important to rely on our own sources of information — made by and for Canadians," she said.
"CBC will never be controlled by Musk or Zuckerberg. It will never belong to billionaire tech oligarchs. It will always belong to the people of Canada," she said, referencing Elon Musk, the owner of social media platform X and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.
"It's not a Liberal or a Conservative issue. It's a commitment to ourselves, our culture and our independence," she added, saying the CBC was first formed in 1936 to give Canadians a homegrown source for news and entertainment when much of that content was American.
To improve the quality of the corporation's programming in both English and French, boost the availability of "trustworthy, local and impartial news" and make the broadcaster a more reliable source of information during emergencies, St-Onge is pitching a funding increase that could nearly double its yearly appropriation.
She said per capita funding for CBC/Radio-Canada is about $33.66, the second lowest in the developed world ahead of only the U.S.
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