WHISSELL — Hey CBC, pull up your pants, you're flashing your bias

Mavros Whissell is a Sudbury-based geologist and land technicianIt’s far too early to be singing the praises of Mark Carney, but that isn’t stopping the CBC from becoming his loudest cheerleader. While the public sector is being decimated, the public broadcaster continues to receive government support.You can see it in their eyes and hear it in their uneasy laughter.A CBC livestream aired Mark Carney’s first speech as the duly elected Prime Minister of Canada on May 2. It was hosted by David Cochrane and Rosemary Barton, seated amongst a panel of analysts. While both hosts were relatively calm on this occasion, that’s not always the case.During the leaders’ debates, for instance, a visibly flustered Barton attacked Rebel News reporter Drea Humphrey by implying that she was a residential school denier. Barton asserted that, “Yes, there have been remains of Indigenous children found in various places around the country which [Humphrey] misrepresented.”As the Western Standard reported, there is currently no such evidence..CBC corrects Barton's mistake on indigenous residential school graves .David Cochrane has made his own gaffes under the gun. Live on air, during the police takedown of the Freedom Convoy, Cochrane opined that among the protesters, “There's a lot of people that are motivated by two things: Christ and conspiracy.” (Skip to the 2:00:01 mark on the tape.).Just like Barton — indeed, like most of us — Cochrane’s bias surfaces under pressure. That reminds us that yes, state media does hire biased reporters. But they can relax — for now.During his election campaign, Mark Carney pledged to increase funding to the CBC by $150M.Carney’s pledge followed former Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge’s recommendation in Feb to nearly double per capita public funding to the CBC from about $34 to $62..The worst part of it all was watching the potential recipients of a raise, fawn over their benefactor. They were particularly impressed with Carney’s promise to give Poilievre a by-election as soon as possible, allowing him to return to Parliament and continue as the leader of the Official Opposition.“This was political genius, today,” exclaimed Abacus Data’s Tim Powers. “Right now, Canadians don’t want the partisan nonsense, they don’t want what they lived through the last two years.”“I think that’s the brilliance of this,” gushed NDP strategist Jordan Leichnitz. “It’s something that his predecessor Justin Trudeau is not likely to have done and it’s something Pierre Poilievre would never have done.”“Mark Carney’s strongest argument,” CBC writer Aaron Wherry added, “is that he’s the adult in the room and he wants to get down to business and do things. The last thing he wants to do at this moment probably is to give Conservatives something to unite around, and if he delayed this by-election, Conservatives could get mad at him.”.What everyone at CBC was so enamoured with is called “depoliticization,” which is the process of removing both the input and debate involved in government decision-making. That includes choosing to run a by-election. At the start, to many Canadians, depoliticization’s going to appear as a welcome relief or, as Tim Powers implied, like an escape from “partisan nonsense.”The panel repeatedly hailed the virtues of depoliticization, but never once used that term. They were just too busy being impressed with Carney’s promises to remove political sparring. It might even be amenable to conservative-minded voters: No more virtue-signalling. No more race-baiting.Sounds good, doesn’t it?.But watch for when Carney’s decisions are ultimately revealed, long after being made and carried out. That’s going to be his eventual downfall.Everyone on the CBC panel seemed to miss that depoliticization coming from a “consummate technocrat,” as Leichnitz parroted, can have tripwires preventing promised solutions (like a balanced budget.)We’re just starting to see those tripwires now, in how Carney approaches his operational budget.While pledged to increase funding to the CBC, Carney is in the process of taking away jobs from services like at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), where they slashed over 1,000 jobs on Friday. Those were term contracts for employees at Contact Centres.I hope you don’t have any problems with your taxes this year.It’s all about priorities, you see. The priority is for Carney to maintain a positive image, allowing him to “get down to business and do things”, as Wherry said. He’s cutting people and replacing them with AI in this case. That’s a tripwire we can easily see that helps him redirect money to the CBC, all helping him reach the goal of a balanced operating budget.The tripwires are going to become more and more numerous as time goes on, and depoliticization becomes more opaque and harder to justify. Carney knows this, and he knows he’s going to need someone to make him look good, just to survive. Right now, Carney’s got the CBC cheerleading for him, even though they don’t appear to understand what they’re cheering about. That’s definitely worth a $150 million increase.Mavros Whissell is a Sudbury-based geologist and land technician.

WHISSELL — Hey CBC, pull up your pants, you're flashing your bias

Related Stories