The random tweet of a Liberal MP does not, of course, represent Liberal government policy. But when Liberal Whitby MP Ryan Turnbull tweeted it was ‘scary’ that a ‘Poilievre-led government would end subsidies to mainstream media and defund the CBC,’ you can bet he is channeling Liberal water-cooler conversation.
After all, the Liberals love the CBC. They love it so much that as reported by Blacklock’s, they want to leave the door open for CEO Catherine Tait to receive a bonus as she leaves the building for the last time, even though under her leadership the CBC loses money. Which is to say it can’t live within the $1.4 billion budget allowed it by the Government of Canada.
Mercy! Who gets a bonus when they lose money?
Actually in the CBC, a lot of people; 45 senior executives got to share $3.3 million — an average of $73,000 each.
Read about it here.
Nice work if you can get it, then. But seriously, why would a Liberal MP find defunding the CBC and ending subsidies to the mainstream media so ‘scary?’
Sad for people who lose their jobs, of course. And in the case of the CBC, there are still people with a sentimental attachment to growing up on a remote Saskatchewan farm, and a childhood of listening for the crackle of Hockey Night in Canada on their grandfather’s steam-driven radio… I understand that actually and have my own sense of loss when remembering the years when to get behind the microphone at the BBC, you had to speak ‘received English.’
But how much do you want the struggling taxpayer to pay for that?
And in Turnbull’s case, it’s got nothing to do with sentiment, anyway. It’s that stopping the cheques would mean ‘greatly diminishing the information economy in Canada and making us dependent on social media platforms owned by American billionaires for our news.’
Like the one he was using to make his comments, for example, which even though owned by an American billionaire is actually a free-speech, free-for-all. For heaven's sake man, don't complain you're hungry when your mouth's full.
But he has no problem at all with news being filtered through… what? Something bought-and-paid-for by the Government of Canada that behaves with the predictability of a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Liberal Party?
I suppose if they’re playing your tune it’s easier to justify to yourself but one wonders how Mr. Turnbull would feel about the sanctity of the CBC’s budget if a mischievous demon switched out the key presenters and replaced them with people who thought like Fox News — you know, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity and Dana Perino?
Picture if you will, Judge Jeanine Pirro holding Liberal feet to the fire… holding Ryan Turnbull’s feet to the fire, in fact.
He'd hate it, they’d hate it and they’re much more comfortable with Catherine Tait’s worldview, one that (according to True North quoting the US Federal Election Commission) can even accommodate her donations to Hillary Clinton’s presidential election campaign in 2016, the year that (ahem!) the Fox favourite defeated her for the US presidency.
It is fun and easy to mock Turnbull and the other dopes around the water cooler.
But here’s what's actually scary. It's the Trudeau Liberal plan to confine speech and expression in Canada in a cage with three bars — Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, Bill C-18, the Online News Act and Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act.
C-11 was passed last year and brought streaming services such as YouTube and Netflix under the control of the CRTC.
Bill C-18 was meant to force Google and Facebook to hand over cash to failing mainstream news media. Facebook responded by refusing to be a paper boy any longer, for an ungrateful Canadian media.
C-63 remains at second reading in the House of Commons but if passed would usher in an Orwellian world which in the name of stamping out “hate” would in fact create an office of approved speech and thought crimes by setting up a so-called Digital Safety Commissioner.
Expression considered hateful by the courts will be made punishable by up to life in prison. And by the way, under this legislation, if you've ever said anything in the past that somebody decides to take offence to today — anybody, your ex-wife, your evil-minded neighbour or just somebody who wants to make a quick $20,000 (because that's the reward due to a succcesfull complainant) — this kangaroo court can decide you might do it again and impose restraints on you including house arrest and denial of internet access.
It's the world of Minority Report. Those with a further interest in how the Liberal government of which MP Turnbull is a part seeks to restrain private speech will find improving the remarks of our friend Ezra Levant to the George Jonas Awards dinner, hosted a few months ago by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom.
Anyway, as commentator Jen Gerson put it, “these measures reveal deeply authoritarian instincts toward speech and regulation.”
And why? Timothy Denton, a consultant and former CRTC Commissioner says leaders in Canada and elsewhere have simply become nervous about the manner in which the internet has freed citizens from their control. It’s hugely expanded the capacity for independent thought, he says, and so “must be hampered and stopped.”
Exactly. If Ryan Turnbull finds the CBC to his taste, that's his prerogative. But as for me, count me in with the many Canadians who prefer to take their chances with Elon Musk, rather than a government subsidised media that in return for 30 pieces of silver from Trudeau, picks up the handcuffs and snaps them on tight.