This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By Peter Menzies, November 4, 2025
This week, we will learn whether CBC will receive the additional $150 million the prime minister promised during the spring election campaign or if it will be facing the 15 percent cut in spending it was asked to contemplate over the summer.
Perhaps it will be both. Maybe the $150 million on top of the Mother Corp’s current allocation of roughly $1.4 billion will be categorized as “investment” with the remainder accounted for as “operating.” Given that a new era of fiscal legerdemain has been forecast, anything seems possible, and a first test of the CBC’s independence will be whether and how enthusiastically it adopts the new language Mark Carney and his Finance Minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne, will be using to articulate what was previously known as a “deficit.”
Once that is out of the way, we’ll have a better chance of assessing new CBC CEO Marie-Philippe Bouchard’s chances of finding success with the new “plan” announced last month. To be clear, the CBC, like most corporations, outlines its strategic objectives on an annual basis. Nothing novel about that, and, as most people with experience in such matters can attest, this part of the process is just about aspirations. What really matters are the action plans to come.
So far, what we know is CBC intends to become more attractive to people in rural areas and Western Canada, or, as Bouchard put it, people “are less likely to be in contact with us.” Never mind that putting “Western Canada” and “rural areas” in the same sentence is itself likely to inflame CBC’s alienated critics. What Bouchard is describing is likely where most anglophone Canadians live. Western Canada is where 13.5 million almost entirely anglophone Canadians are located. It is home to, after Toronto, three of Canada’s largest anglophone cities—Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton.
When it comes to the market, Bouchard seeks to repatriate—as opposed to Radio-Canada’s Quebec-based francophone audience— what’s closing in on half the country. Add rural Ontarians, Maritimers, and others, and you’re into majority territory.
So, a wee bit more complicated than, as Bouchard recently explained, “being in the communities where they are” and “including a more diverse set of points of view.”
One does not want, at this stage, to be too sour regarding the sincerity of Bouchard’s ambitions. But it is also not possible to avoid skepticism, seeing as she was encouraged to apply for the position by Justin Trudeau’s Heritage Minister, Pascale St-Onge, and was on the committee formed to create a new vision for the organization at a time when the spectre of a “defund the CBC” Pierre Poilievre government loomed menacingly on the Mother Corp’s horizon.
We really still have no idea what she means by “diverse” when it comes to opinions, because while she has been in the job for closing in on a year now, there is no evidence to indicate she sees anything wrong with the status quo. The National’s “At Issue” panel, for instance, continues to consist of host Rosemary Barton, Andrew Coyne, Althia Raj, and Chantal Hebert. Each is qualified, but when it comes to diversity of perspective, the gruel is pretty thin.
So what does Bouchard mean by more diversity? Does it mean adding a Western-based or Indigenous voice that’s in alignment with the “At Issue” panel’s very narrow range of acceptable opinion? Or will she really tolerate the inclusion of someone along the lines of the late Rex Murphy or the much-maligned Jordan Peterson?
So far, that seems unlikely. Bouchard has, for instance, brushed aside the idea that she should investigate antisemitism within her newsrooms, deeming it unnecessary despite controversial incidents.
And both she and her editor in chief, Brodie Fenlon, told the Senate transport and communications committee that there’s no issue of bias in the organization.
Liberal appointee Senator Andrew Cardozo suggested to Bouchard that “there is a sizable part of the population that believes the CBC is biased, that it has a political approach, that it is preachy.”
Bouchard waved away such a notion, while Fenlon said the CBC newsroom is the least biased he’s ever worked in.
Cardozo, a former CRTC commissioner unlikely to ever be accused of Conservative leanings, has suggested the CBC be prepared to “prove it” by forwarding unresolved consumer complaints to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council.
Well, good luck with that. The CBC defers to no one. In the past, it has only grudgingly conceded that even the CRTC has authority over it. To all intents and purposes, the CBC might be right. The CRTC may think it can direct the CBC, but in reality, its licensing process is theatre.
So there you have it. Barring the release of an action plan, the evidence to date is that the CBC believes itself to be completely without bias, has no reason to investigate itself, and intends to keep the good ship status quo trimmed and seaworthy.
And it will work hard to ensure that, in the future, westerners, ranchers, farmers, fishers, and other rural people can better understand what they, inexplicably, seem incapable of grasping: the beauty and wonder of the eternal CBC.
Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, a Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, and a former vice chair of the CRTC.
