Matthew Lau is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy.The CBC will receive approximately $1.38 billion in federal funding this year, but some Canadians wonder whether it ought to receive any taxpayer money at all. In fact, even the recently published annual report from the Office of the Ombud at the CBC raised questions about the value of publicly funded broadcasting.“It has been said ad infinitum,” writes CBC Ombud Maxime Bertrand, “that trust is the backbone of public media. Without trust, public broadcasters can’t function. My sense, however, is that we may have moved beyond that formulation. The erosion of trust is no longer a nebulous threat, a vision of what may come to pass if the media fails to do X or Y: it is here, now. The public, it would appear, has lost faith. The question they’re asking now is not how public media can be made more accountable, but why it even exists.”According to Bertrand, questions about why public (that is, state-funded) media exists “can no longer be waved away.” She notes that across the pond, the BBC has recently struggled “with a profound crisis over allegations of bias,” which “underscores the fragility of ‘legacy’ media’s reputation today. If that sounds like doomsaying, allow me to point out that these sentiments are a direct reflection of my daily correspondence with Canadian audiences.”The government should not ignore these negative sentiments from Canadians whose taxes pay for the CBC. Whether the broadcaster is biased or not, if Canadians, for whatever reason, do not like it, they should not be forced to pay for it. Bertrand’s report supplies ample evidence, if not of growing bias at the CBC, at least of growing audience dissatisfaction with it. In 2025/26, the CBC Ombud received 11,096 comments, complaints, or expressions of concern, up 6.9% from 2024/25 and more than double the average over the previous three years (2021/22 to 2023/24). Among the topics that generated the complaints were gender issues, the appropriate job title of a US cabinet minister (Secretary of Defence versus Secretary of War), and events in Iran..In particular, the CBC Ombud report noted one instance where the CBC invited the president of the Iranian Canadian Congress, a pro-regime organization, onto Power & Politics during the height of Iranian protests in January. While political shows usually feature strong opinions, many viewers believed “certain assertions went insufficiently challenged. Management later acknowledged that the interview fell short of editorial standards.” The CBC also received criticism over its Israel-Hamas war coverage, including from Jewish organizations whose analyses claimed CBC reporting has favoured Hamas and disfavoured Israel.Yet another source of complaints to the CBC: featuring Wayne Gretzky during hockey coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics. Some viewers were evidently unhappy that a legendarily famous Canadian, who also happens to be friends with the US president, would be featured on Canada’s publicly funded broadcaster.Again, the case for removing taxpayer funding for the CBC does not actually rely on it being biased on Israel or other topics. It relies only on the principle that people should not have to pay for broadcasting they do not like or do not want to consume — whether it is because they think the CBC’s war reporting is biased or because they don’t like Wayne Gretzky anymore, or for any other reason..After all, this is an economic principle people apply to most other areas without question. For example, nobody believes in forcing vegetarians (or other non-hamburger eaters) to pay for hamburgers. Only hamburger eaters should pay for hamburgers. And importantly, hamburger eaters should pay the restaurants and stores directly for the hamburgers, instead of paying for hamburgers through taxes.The government funding model is always a problem because it effectively makes politicians, rather than actual consumers, the customer. A study published in 2003 in The Journal of Law and Economics examined two theories of government ownership of media based on evidence from 97 countries. The first theory was that “government ownership cures market failures” and the second was that “government ownership undermines political and economic freedoms.” The researchers concluded, “The data support the second theory.”Similarly to restaurants that sell hamburgers, therefore, the CBC’s funding should come from its audience and advertisers, not taxpayers. Canadians who do not like or trust the CBC — a growing number, if the ombuds’ report is any indication — should not have to pay for it. For better broadcasting that better serves Canadian audiences and taxpayers, the federal government should defund and privatize the CBC.Matthew Lau is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy.
