Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said he still intends to defund the CBC if he becomes prime minister, but he doesn’t have a specific time frame for doing so.
Poilievre used the “defund the CBC” theme prominently after becoming Tory leader, accusing the public broadcaster of a pro-Liberal Party bias, but he has not been as vocal about the issue during the campaign.
“I don’t have a time frame, but … I’ve already made my position clear on that, and it hasn’t changed,” he said while taking questions from reporters during a campaign event in Montreal on April 15.
Poilievre has pledged to keep the French-language services of Radio-Canada.
“A Conservative government will maintain funding for francophone and Quebec culture,” he said at a rally in Quebec City in late March.
During the campaign event in Montreal, Poilievre said Radio-Canada needs to be funded to provide information to francophones across the country, which wouldn’t be available without the public broadcaster.
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On the issue of the CBC, he said he would defund it and “let Canadians enjoy it as a non-profit, self-funded organization.”
Along with accusing the CBC of bias, Poilievre has criticized it for competing with other media for advertising dollars while receiving $1.38 billion in funding from Ottawa.
While Poilievre has not made defunding the CBC a key plank of his electoral platform, Liberal Leader Mark Carney has pledged more funding for the network as a bid to protect Canadian culture and institutions.
Carney has brought up the CBC regularly during his campaign events. He said on April 15 that Canada has been on an “unsustainable road” economically but he rejects the idea of erasing “our most important cultural institutions, like CBC/Radio-Canada.”
Earlier this month, the Liberal leader pledged to increase CBC/Radio-Canada’s budget by an initial $150 million, saying it would help protect Canada’s identity amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s “attacks on Canada.”
He has also dismissed the idea that Radio-Canada could be funded while CBC would not.
Carney said a new Liberal government would review the public broadcaster’s mandate so that it can play a larger role in relaying information on natural disasters. Another role he would give to CBC/Radio-Canada is to “combat disinformation, so that Canadians have a news source they know they can trust.”
“Our plan will safeguard a reliable Canadian public square in a sea of misinformation and disinformation so we can stay informed and tell our own stories in our own languages,” Carney said.
